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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



The Supreme Miracle 

and Other Sermons 



By Theodore Gerald Soares, Ph.D., D.D. 

Minister of the First Baptist Church 
Oak Park, Illinois 



PRESS OF 

JENNINGS & GRAHAM 

CHICAGO 



*J3ft£SS? 
ipies fiocsiyed 

ma z7 1905 

A W -Miry 

&- AAC, Wos | 



Copyright 1904 
by Theodore Gerald Soares 






TO 

MY WIFE 

KINDEST AND KEENEST CRITIC 



PREFACE 

The initial responsibility for printing these ser- 
mons rests with the Men's League of the First Bap- 
tist Church of Oak Park — a loyal, active and re- 
sourceful body of men, untiring in their efforts for 
the good of the church in the service of God. They 
have meant much in the pastor's ministry. One of 
their many plans of usefulness was this endeavor to 
help the sick and shut-in members of the church, 
and to extend the influence of the pulpit, by print- 
ing a sermon once a month for distribution. It was 
designed to issue eight during the year. And now 
that the series is completed, they are put into per- 
manent form. 

A preacher naturally shrinks from publishing his 
sermons, for a sermon is properly a spoken message 
to a congregation. But when the hearers them- 
selves ask for the sermon, that they may be readers 
also, the preacher hopes that his word may be more 
than the inspiration of an hour. He trusts that 
those who have heard may be willing to think again 
upon the truths that he has tried to present to them. 
And with that naturally comes a larger hope, that 
the written word, even without the personal interpre- 
tation, may still preach the gospel. Not a little en- 
couragement has come through the year from those 
who have found some help in the printed pages. 



6 PREFACE. 

So this little volume goes out where the big 
books are, happy that it has a few friends in ad- 
vance who will heed its message, not very ambitious 
to elbow its way into a great place, yet hoping that 
some may read, and be led to think of the Christ, 
whom the sermons have sought to interpret. 

The Author. 

Christmastide, IQ04. 



CONTENTS 



The Supreme Miracle 

Man to Man 

The Secret of Jesus 

Why Make Judas the Treasurer? 

American Antagonisms 

What Is Good? .... 

The Great and the Small 

Is Christianity the Final Religion? 



9 
25 
43 
59 
75 
91 
109 
125 



THE SUPREME MIRACLE 



THE SUPREME MIRACLE 

He that sent Me is with Me; He hath not left Me 
alone; for I do always the things that are pleasing to 
Him* — [John viii: 29.] 

In one of the former conversations between Jesus 
and the Jews, they had asked him to work a miracle as 
proof of his Messiahship. Doubtless they thought they 
could believe if something sufficiently marvelous were 
shown to them. Jesus did not comply with their de- 
mand. As he said afterwards in a parable : if men be- 
lieve not Moses and the prophets, they will not believe 
though one rose from the dead. Moral faith cannot 
be founded upon physical marvels. If the pretended 
healer of today could walk into a hospital, and by his 
word cure every patient of every disease, I should not 
believe in him, and his boasted apostolic mission. I 
should very readily admit that there was a set of psy- 
chical phenomena beyond my understanding, meriting 
careful study by competent investigators, but I should 
not believe in a man for whose methods I have no re- 
spect and whose disinterestedness is so decidedly ques- 
tionable. A miracle is not a spiritual argument. 

In former days a favorite method of proving the 
truth of Christianity was by the record of the miracles. 
It was felt that all should say with Nicodemus of our 
Lord, "No man can do these signs that thou doest ex- 
cept God be with him." But what if one should deny 



12 THE SUPREME MIRACLE. 

the miracles? It is very difficult to prove them. As. 
a matter of fact, we believe the gospel first and the 
miracles afterwards. Our faith is founded upon some- 
thing infinitely more fundamental than any marvelous 
event that ever happened. We do not believe in the in- 
carnation, "God manifest in the flesh," because of the 
miraculous conception. We love to read the chaste and 
exquisite story of the virgin of Nazareth. It seems 
so beautiful, I had almost said so natural, that Jesus 
should come thus into the world. But he never asked 
anyone to believe on him because he was conceived of 
the Holy Ghost. And the apostles made no claim for 
the truth of their message upon that ground. The mys- 
tery of the coming of Jesus can never be an argument 
for his spiritual authority. We must believe in him 
first, and in the wondrous Christmas story afterwards. 
Have I gone too far in stating that our faith does not 
depend upon the marvelousness of any event that ever 
happened? Will it not be objected that the apostles 
did found their faith on a miracle — that great miracle, 
the supreme exhibition of the power of the spiritual 
over the material — the resurrection of Jesus? But 
Paul's splendid argument upon the resurrection is not 
based on the fact (though he showed that the fact could 
be five hundred .times attested) that the dead body was 
supernaturally restored to life. That would be a mar- 
vel. But the resurrection was far more than a marvel. 
It was a revelation. It revealed that Jesus is living- and 
is alive for evermore. Not the marvelousness then 
even of the stupendous miracle of the Easter morning, 
but its spiritual significance, is its , value for our faith. 



THE SUPREME MIRACLE 13 

Thanks be unto God who giveth us the victory through 
our Lord Jesus Christ, the living Saviour. 

And yet it was a true instinct that led men to expect 
miracles as an evidence of religious truth. Religion is 
God's revelation to man and man's experience of God. 
It is out of the ordinary. It is supernatural. Assured- 
ly then religion- will impress men as wonderful. But 
because religion is altogether of the spirit, the super- 
natural wonder must be in the sphere of the spirit. 
Christianity has a miracle in the sphere of the spirit. 
It is more wonderful than the virgin birth, more won- 
derful than the resurrection. It is the supreme miracle 
of the world — Jesus himself. 

We need not be surprised that this miracle did not 
impress all the contemporaries of Jesus. It does not 
impress us as it ought. We still think sometimes that 
the act of walking on the sea was more wondrous than 
the personage who walked there. We have often read 
the eighth chapter of John without being startled and 
arrested by the words of our text. They seem to come 
so naturally from Jesus that we do not perceive the 
marvel. "I do always the things that are pleasing to 
the Father." What a statement ! Always ? He who 
understood the divine will so completely that he could 
give us an ideal of life that still seems infinitely beyond 
us — did he always the things that were pleasing to the 
Father? He who could say, "Ye therefore shall be 
perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" — did he ful- 
fill his own commandment? 

That is the supreme miracle. There is the super- 



14 THE SUPREME MIRACLE. 

natural occurrence as evidence of your religion — the 
sinless man. 

For think what sinlessness involves. Sin is every- 
where and in everybody. Its taint is in every infant 
that is born into the world. Sin meets us at every 
turn in life, mingling with our best motives, spoiling 
our most unselfish efforts. Sin has entered insidiously 
into every moral reform and has marred every spiritual 
endeavor. Sin has lessened the influence of every great 
teacher and has injured the work of every religious 
leader. Yet once in all the centuries, once in all the 
world, as a white flower out of the stained waters, 
there was a sinless man. 

Might he not have been very good without being 
sinless ? And so our supreme miracle would vanish. A 
good man would not say, "I do always the things that 
are pleasing to the Father." For good men have been 
most conscious of their sins and shortcomings. No 
saint ever said, "Which of you convicteth me of sin?" 
as Jesus in his challenge to the Jews. The men of holi- 
est lives and most unselfish work, before whom the 
world has bowed in reverent appreciation, have been 
men whose faces were wet with the tears of contrition, 
for they have most clearly seen that they had sinned 
and come short of the glory of God. 

But Jesus never said, "Father forgive me." His eyes 
never dropped before the gaze of infinite holiness. He 
walked the maze of life with quiet confidence, and trod 
its slippery paths with certain tread. Through child- 
hood, youth and manhood he knew that he never had 
desire of evil, but did always the things that were pleas- 



THE SUPREME MIRACLE. 1 5 

ing to the Father. His own consciousness of himself 
is our best proof that he was the sinless man. The only 
one that has ever been, and therefore the supreme mir- 
acle. 

As it was a true instinct that led men to expect the 
miraculous in religion, so it was also a true instinct that 
led the defenders of the faith to offer miracles as an 
evidence of the truth of their propositions. But of 
course there cannot be a physical evidence of a spiritual 
fact. The miracle to be of evidential value must be in 
the sphere of the spirit. Thus the supreme miracle, the 
sinless Jesus himself, is the great religious argument. 
It is first of all a demonstration that Christianity is di- 
vine. It is then a revelation of the divinity of hu- 
manity. And it is further an anticipation of the des- 
tiny of the children of men. 

Think of the sinlessness of Jesus as 

A DEMONSTRATION 

of the divine supremacy of Christianity. That is, that 
Christianity is the religion of God for the whole world, 
the best that God can ever give to us. It is contrary 
to our modern attitude of mind to think of the best as 
having been in the past. We are evolutionists. We 
think of things as advancing, unfolding, improving, 
"the best is yet to be." Especially is this true with re- 
gard to humanity. It is plain to us that the human race 
has advanced. Our civilization seems to be higher than 
any of the civilizations that are gone. Our morality 
we trust is improving. How then came it that the best 
man, the only one who ever was sinless and perfect. 



1 6 THE SUPREME MIRACLE. 

lived his life nineteen centuries ago? Why has there 
never been another since? How came this perfecting 
of humanity once in the long history, and never 
again ? 

It is a fact with which any mere rationalism will 
have to deal. And there is no more difficult fact to ex- 
plain. The men who knew Jesus best, as they thought 
of him in the years after he had gone beyond their 
sight, tried to explain him. They said he was the Son 
of God. That he was God manifest in the flesh. 
That he was the only begotten from the bosom of the 
Father. We do not quite understand what they meant. 
But we have not found any better way of explaining 
Jesus. We are quite sure that he did not just happen 
to be. He is God's best gift to the world. He is all of 
God that can ever be expressed in humanity. 

As the later church sought to formulate her thought 
of Jesus, she stated in unmistakable language: Jesus 
is God. That is so startling that many have been of- 
fended. They have said : there is only one God ; God 
cannot be born and live and die; it must mean that 
Jesus is like God. But it means more than that. It 
means that God is like Jesus. The highest that we can 
know of God spiritually, we know through Jesus. Of 
course men were inspired with noble thoughts of the 
Almighty before Jesus came. They knew his might 
and his excellence, 

The heavens declare the glory of God, 
And the firmament showeth his handiwork. 

They knew more than that, for they knew him as 



THE SUPREME MIRACLE. 1 7 

love and kindness and mercy. But when you know 
Jesus, love, kindness, mercy cease to be abstractions. 
You see God as he is. You feel his sympathy. You 
are thrilled with the spiritual fellowship. You say with 
a new accent, and a happier confidence, "My Father !" 

It is a simple fact that Jesus is God to the spiritual 
minds of all the world today. Not only Christians who 
call him Son of God, but also those who cannot use 
the title, see God through him. Men among us, who do 
not call themselves Christians at all, have formed their 
conceptions of God through Jesus. The new leaders of 
Hindoo thought, whose beautiful teachings have so im- 
pressed us, have been under Christian influence, and 
they speak as they do of God because they have seen 
him in the face of Jesus Christ. Even the Jews, half 
unconsciously, interpret God to themselves through 
Jesus. And the rabbis of the reformed Judaism find 
their largest and most interested audiences when they 
speak of the greatest of their prophets, whom they 
love to call the Prophet of Nazareth. 

Very largely without realizing what they were doing, 
men have learned that God must be what Jesus is. We 
cannot think of anything better. There never has been 
seen, or said, or sung on earth anything better than 
Jesus. He is God manifest in the flesh. 

Therefore Christianity is not one of the religions of 
the world. I have every respect for the religions of 
other men. No one should speak slightingly of the 
earnest attempts of any people to know God. Religions 
which the great peoples of the world have believed for 
centuries have something of truth. Buddha, Confucius, 



l8 THE SUPREME MIRACLE. 

Zoroaster were good men. Mohammed had much of 
nobility and earnestness of character. The mighty re- 
ligions which such men founded have had their part in 
the development of the race. But Christianity is not 
one of them. It is not even the best of them. For the 
Founder of Christianity was not a Confucius or a Bud- 
dha. He was not a saint, a teacher, a prophet. He did 
not come to tell us about God. He came to reveal 
God. The sinless one, who did always the things that 
were pleasing to the Father, could say to us, "he that 
hath seen me hath seen the Father." There can be 
nothing better than that. Christianity is the supreme 
religion for all the world, for only Christianity has, or 
can ever have, the supreme miracle. 
The sinlessne^s of Jesus is also 

A REVELATION 

of the divinity of humanity. If in a real sense Jesus, 
the sinless man, was one with the Father, then the re- 
markable result follows that divinity and humanity are 
essentially one. Will you allow me a comparison, which 
I offer in all reverence ? It may at first appear offen- 
sive, but I think it is justified. Mythologies have con- 
ceived certain creatures combining the natures of men 
and beasts. The centaur was part horse and part man ; 
the Minotaur part bull and part man; the satyr part 
goat and part man ; the merman part fish and part man. 
But each of these was not only an abnormality, but a 
monstrosity. There is no kinship between a man and 
a horse. A creature with equine and human character- 
istics is impossible. It was only a wanton fancy that 



THE SUPREME MIRACLE. 19 

could create it. If then God and man have no kin- 
ship together, God in the flesh would be an unthinkable 
being. As the centaur is neither a horse nor a man, 
the being produced by the union of the human and di- 
vine would be neither God nor man. The theologians 
tried to elaborate a theory of two distinct natures in 
Christ. But that is unthinkable. Jesus was one per- 
sonality. The supreme miracle was not a bit of di- 
vine wonder-working, but the fulfilment of that which 
was dimly foreseen in the beginning, "God made man in 
his own image." 

So far from being a strange preternatural creation, 
Jesus was so natural that nobody marveled at him at 
all. His brothers and sisters grew up with him, and 
found him a boy, a youth, a man. During his ministry 
people wondered at his works and at his words. But 
he himself was so natural, so perfectly a man, that they 
forgot to wonder at him. The supreme miracle was 
among them, and they knew it not. It was only after- 
wards, when they looked back and reflected, that they 
said, "We beheld his glory, the glory as of the only be- 
gotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." 

Of course the sinless man was natural. In point of 
fact, Jesus was the only real man that ever lived. The 
rest of us are men in the making. We have character- 
istics not worthy of men. But there was nothing in 
Jesus that is not perfectly, naturally human. He was 
not an abnormal being because he did not sin. Sin is 
abnormality. But there are so many sinners that we 
get used to it, and suppose it is the inevitable, and half 



20 THE SUPREME MIRACLE. 

excuse ourselves with the reflection, "to err is human." 
But Jesus was a man as he should be. 

The realization of the sinlessness of Jesus ought to 
end our controversies about him, and turn our atten- 
tion to what he means to us. Sometimes men say very 
decidedly : Jesus is not divine, he is only a perfect man. 
Only a perfect man? There could not be perfection 
unless there dwelt in him all the fullness of the God- 
head bodily, that is all of God that is expressible in 
humanity. The sinless man must be God in the flesh. 
But, on the other hand, we often insist that Jesus was 
not only a perfect man, he was also divine. But a per- 
fect man is divine. The perfection of humanity is 
divinity. For Jesus is himself the revelation that God 
and men are essentially one. If it be fitting to say 
that Jesus is God, it is equally certain that Jesus is man. 
There is nothing unhuman in him. If we were all 
like him, there would not be a different order of beings 
on the earth. There would be simply humanity come 
to itself. 

I hope I do not seem to be theological. I think this 
is the most important and most practical truth that we 
can hold. If Ave are kin with God, we ought to know 
it and to think upon it. When our Lord was praying 
for his disciples at the last, this truth was so significant 
to him, that it breathes all through the prayer, "As 
Thou Father art in me, and I in thee, that they also 
may be in us. . . .1 in them and thou in me." Jesus 
prays that as he shared the life of the Father, so might 
the disciples share it also ; that Father, Son, believers 
might be one, of the same divine nature. 



THE SUPREME MIRACLE. 21 

The rashest dreams of man would not have dared to 
imagine such a thing, that we should be the same as 
God. Nothing could make it evident but the historical 
fact of the sinless Jesus, who revealed in himself, in his 
perfectness, that divinity and humanity are one. 

Our Lord of course does not say that all men are di- 
vine. Humanity is divine. The perfect man is divine. 
The supreme miracle then is 

AN ANTICIPATION, 

a prophecy of the perfecting of the children of men. 
Humanity is an ideal which has never been realized 
except in Jesus. We say of certain acts that they are 
inhuman. For a man to beat his wife, whom he has 
sworn to love, to abuse those dependent on him or 
weaker than himself, we say is inhuman. We do not 
mean by that to imply that human beings are not guilty 
of such acts. Doubtless a majority of men and women 
on the earth commit acts of inhumanity. And in that 
expression we betray our own consciousness that hu- 
manity is an ideal. We say sometimes of persons 
whom we meet that they are poor apologies for men. 
Macbeth asks the murderers who they are. "We are 
men, my liege." And he answers with a sneer, "Ay, in 
the catalogue ye go for men." Hamlet expresses his 
disgust, "I have thought that some of Nature's jour- 
neymen had made men, and not made them well, they 
imitated humanity so abominably." When Antony 
would speak the best of Brutus, he says, 



22 THE SUPREME MIRACLE. 

His life was gentle ; and the elements 

So mixed in him, that Nature might stand up, 

And say to all the world, This was a man! 

And the centuries have responded to the word of 
Pilate, in a significance that the Roman never dreamed, 
"Ecce homo, Behold the Man!" 

These expressions of our speech and from literature 
reveal our common consciousness that humanity is an 
ideal. My brothers, we are not men yet. There has 
been only one man. But he is a prophecy, a promise. 
Hear Paul's magnificent anticipation : "whom he fore- 
knew he also foreordained to be conformed to the im- 
age of his son, that he might be the firstborn among 
many brethren." Would we then know our destiny? 
We need no astrologer to cast a horoscope. We may 
come to the gospels, and read them again, and ponder 
them, until the matchless personality of Jesus becomes 
real to us, the supreme miracle of the world, the sin- 
less man. Then we may say to ourselves "we shall be 
like him." I can conceive no higher motive to live the 
sober, righteous and godly life in this present world. 

In the days of Napoleon, who with all his selfish and 
pitiless subordination of men and nations to his own 
ambitions, was a soldier, every inch a soldier, a recon- 
struction took place in the French army. Under the 
old regime the officers were all of gentle blood; only 
nobles were generals ; with the result that often titled 
and gilded ineptitude led the armies of France. Na- 
poleon would have military genius in command of his 
troops. And he cared little whether his officers were 
the sons of peasants or of lords. He would scarcely 



THE SUPREME MIRACLE. 23 

have sympathized with the idea that has been advanced 
in the American navy, that an essential quality of an 
officer is an acquaintance with the refinements of social 
etiquette. Soult went into the French army as a priv- 
ate, in a day when no gentleman could possibly be a 
private. He had extraordinary ability, and rose rapid- 
ly through the ranks of officers to the highest place, 
Field Marshal of France and Duke of Dalmatia. Ney 
was a corporal, and became also a marshal. Every pri- 
vate in the ranks knew that nothing could prevent his 
rising to the highest honor, if he showed himself wor- 
thy. The ambition these promotions engendered 
transformed the army. As the fine French epigram 
ran : every peasant that went into the ranks left room 
in his knapsack for a marshal's baton. 

My comrades in the Christian life, it is not what a 
few of us may be, it is what all of us shall be: chil- 
dren of God, joint-heirs with Jesus Christ. He, the 
sinless man, who could say so naturally, "I do always 
the things that are pleasing to the Father," he is the 
model after which God is fashioning us. Let us go 
home, and go tomorrow to our work and to the market 
place, and live worthy of the hope that is set before us, 
"we shall be like him." 

And unto him that is able to guard us from stum- 
bling, and to set us before the presence of his glory 
without blemish in exceeding joy, to the only God our 
Saviour, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory 
evermore. Amen. 



MAN TO MAN 



MAN TO MAN 

"As in water face answereth to face, so the heart 
of man to man." — [Proverbs, xxvii, 19.] 

Milton has beautifully described the clear surface 
of a pool of water as the first mirror known to man- 
kind. Eve tells her husband how, just created, she 
moved through the garden and was attracted by the 
sound of water: 

I thither went 
With unexperienced thought, and laid me down 
On the green bank, to look into the clear 
Smooth water, that to me seemed another sky, 
As I bent down to look, just opposite 
A shape within the watery gleam appeared 
Bending to look on me. 

The Greeks enshrined this early idea of the mirror 
in the myth of Narcissus. The beautiful boy, who 
listened unmoved to the songs of the nymphs, be- 
holding one day his own fair face reflected in the 
clear waters of a stream, fell in love with the pretty 
image. Bending to kiss it, he perished in the depths 
and was changed into the Narcissus flower. 

The keen sage of Israel, ever anxious with some 
apt illustration to convey a moral thought, uses in 



28 MAN TO MAN. 

the text this simple idea of the face answering to 
face in the watery mirror to suggest the truth that 
the truly human in each of us responds to that 
which is truly human in another. The proverb 
would tell us of the subtle influence of man upon 
man. The potency of life lies in the genuinely 
human. 

Of course there is so much in life that is not gen- 
uinely human. Perhaps necessarily a large part of 
life is very conventional. Our politenesses and civili- 
ties, our expressions of interest and concern, often 
seem to be dangerously insincere. And when one 
looks at the fashionable world, with its regard for 
appearances, its concealment of feeling and its pe- 
culiar code of social ethics, there seems a deal of 
hollowness in it all. But sometimes our humanity 
asserts itself. A great joy or sorrow, a call of pa- 
triotism or philanthropy, makes us forget that "all 
the world's a stage, and all the men and women 
merely players," and reminds us that we are veri- 
table men and women. That which is real in each 
of us responds to that which is real in the other, 
and the heart of man answereth to man as in water 
face answereth to face. 

To put the truth in a word, the secret of influ- 
ence is sympathy. George Eliot speaks of sym- 
pathy as the one poor word which includes all our 
best insight and all our best love. If by sympathy 
we mean fellow-feeling, common human interest, 



MAN TO MAN. 2Q, 

the desire of brother to know and help brother, then 
sympathy is the word which expresses all the possi- 
bility of Christian helpfulness in this life. 

There lay the power of Jesus. He spoke of himself 
as the Son of Man, doubtless intending a certain 
Messianic significance in the title. But we cannot 
help reading it: Son of Humanity. It means to us 
that he was man indeed, and because he was man his 
fellow men responded to him. Why did he speak at 
once to the hearts of those to whom he came, that 
busy fishermen left their nets to follow him, grasp- 
ing publicans forsook their money tables, sinners 
forgot their longings after sin? Not because he was 
the Son of God, for that they did not understand. 
It was because he was the Son of Man. As he 
lived among them, and as his story has been told 
again in every tongue, there was and always has 
been response of the heart of man to his heart. 
Sceptic and believer, saint and sinner, scholar and 
savage have cried as they have understood him, 
"Behold the Man." 

Jesus' power is that he stands on the human level 
and enters into human life. This is clearly shown 
in the epistle to the Hebrews to be the basis of his 
influence with us. "We have not a high priest that 
cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmi- 
ties." (Heb. 4:15.) Indeed the very word of which 
we are speaking is employed in the Greek, and the 
verse may be rendered, "We have not a high priest 
who cannot sympathize with our infirmities." 



30 MAN TO MAN. 

Now, it is not easy to be sympathetic. We are 
sorry of course for people who are unfortunate or 
wicked or stupid, but we are impatient with them 
also. We may wish to help them, but we also ex- 
pect to lecture them. And so ofttimes we fail to 
help them really. It is only sympathy that is help- 
ful, seldom censure, never cynicism. The glory of 
Jesus is that he who was wisest, strongest, best, 
could most completely feel with others, and thus, 
sympathizing, help. 

I repeat that it is natural to be sorry for the needy, 
but it is not easy to be sympathetic. In our pity there 
may be a certain superiority, which is offensive. 
Sympathy is never offensive. We must not think 
that because we feel that something ought to be 
done for the suffering of the poor that therefore we 
are sympathetic. Sympathy is more than that. It 
is to be one with them. It is to deal, not with a case 
of need, but with a man who is a brother. Only then 
comes the response of the heart of man to man. 

Some }^ears ago when the cholera raged in Naples 
the condition of the plague-stricken city was horri- 
ble beyond description. By great sanitary vigilance 
the disease was confined to the poorer quarters of 
the city. This enraged the wretched people who 
were in the midst of the dead and dying. They 
threatened to take their dead and lay them at the 
doors of the rich, and only the utmost care pre- 
vented such threats being put into effect. Every 



MAN TO MAN. 31 

one was sorry for the people and many tried to help 
them. But in their unreasoning misery they refused 
assistance and hated those who came to them. A 
Greek gentleman of wealth, who drove into the 
cholera district with his carriage filled with medi- 
cines, fruit, food and comforts for the sick, was ac- 
tually mobbed by the crazed people, his carriage 
broken to pieces, and he barely escaped with his 
life. They seemed to hate him because he was bet- 
ter off than they. At last the king came to Naples — 
the good Umberto. He went among the people, 
speaking to them in their own Neapolitan patois, 
nursing the sick, comforting the dying, staying 
with the people as one of them, until they forgot 
he was the king and knew only that he was a man. 
Their rage melted into tears and he could lead them 
as he would. That is sympathy. You cannot help 
people from above. They may take your alms, but 
you do not touch their hearts. 

A refined and cultured lady was telling us of an 
incident concerning the lepers near Jerusalem. The 
poor, wretched, loathsome creatures, shunned by the 
lowest of every population, Jewish, Christian and 
Mohammedan, sit by the wayside begging alms, and 
subsist upon the small coins which are contemptu- 
ously tossed to them by those who pass by at a dis- 
tance. Each leper has his cup into which the little 
coins are thrown. A rich gentleman was going up 
to the city and behind him a little way was the lady 
to whom I have referred. As the gentleman passed 



32 MAX TO MAX. 

a leper he threw a coin towards him. Of course he 
would not approach him, for the touch of a leper is 
pollution. The money fell short of the cup. The 
wretched sufferer was so wasted by the disease that 
he was unable to crawl the few paces necessary to 
reach it. As the lady came up he was looking anx- 
iously toward the money he had lost. She picked it 
up for him, put it in the cup and smiled kindly into 
the face of the poor fellow. Tears filled her eyes 
as she told us of the ray of brightness that spread 
over the wan face of the leper, who had been treated 
as an equal by a European lady. 

So, you remember, that while Jesus bade the par- 
alytic rise and take up his bed and walk ; while he 
told the man with the withered hand to stretch it 
forth; when he would heal the despised leper, he 
touched him, and said ''"Be clean." If the healing- 
were the power of the Son of God, the touch of sym- 
pathy was the power of the Son of Man. In the 
fullness of his manly vigor, he could sympathize 
with the suffering, and heal the leper, man to man. 

Perhaps true sympathy is even more difficult in 
the moral sphere. How strongly we condemn the 
sins to which we are not subject! One who is not 
guilty of the grosser sins of the flesh must have a 
fine Christian sympathy indeed to be able to come 
into the attitude to help the fallen. A friend of mine, 
a gentleman of rare Christian character, used fre- 
quently to be asked to speak to the unfortunates in 
the Florence Crittenden Home. The matron said 



MAN TO MAN. 33 

to him : "I like to have you speak to the girls be- 
cause you do not assume the standpoint of superior 
virtue. You preach to them the Saviour, whom we 
all needi" The parable of the Prodigal Son was gen- 
erally selected by those whom she invited to speak. 
The superintendent of a reform school, after thir- 
teen preachers in as many weeks had preached to 
the inmates from that Scripture, decided that he 
must ask future speakers that no reference should 
be made to the Prodigal Son. It should be remem- 
bered, by the way, that our Lord did not speak that 
parable to the outcasts, but to the Pharisees. And 
beautiful as its appeal is to the wandering son, its 
main value is still for the Pharisees, to show the 
meaning of the Father's love. 

Jesus, the purest of the sons of men, "wearing the 
white flower of a stainless life," was so marvelously 
human that he could sympathize with a sinner. They 
brought the wretched woman before him. The law 
said that such a guilty one should die. The Phari- 
sees asked him what should be done with her. Of 
course she ought to be stoned. Such flagrant sin 
ought to be punished. How righteous it makes one 
feel as one insists upon the punishment ! 

"He that is without sin among you let him first 
cast a stone at her," said Jesus. 

He was writing on the ground. In a moment he 
might look up, and those clear eyes read the secrets 
of their hearts. The chief among the Pharisees was 
conveniently near the door. He slipped out to avoid 



34 MAN TO MAN. 

the challenge. The next in order followed, then the 
next, and the next. Presently Jesus looked up. 

"Woman, where are they? Did no man condemn 
thee?" 

"No man, Lord," she answered. 

"Neither do I condemn thee. Go thy way. From 
henceforth sin no more." 

We have not a high priest who cannot sympathize 
with our weaknesses. He knows the power of sin 
better than we know it. It has been most signifi- 
cantly said that only the man who has resisted 
knows the power of sin for all others have given 
way before the climax of the strain. He, pure, 
without sin, sympathized. It is such sympathy that 
saves the outcast, for as in water face answereth to 
face, so the heart of man to man. 

We do not know. We never know. The other 
day we found out in one case. A poor wretch, out 
of work, reading of the success of the footpads of 
Chicago, in a moment of folly decided to make his 
living in that easy way. In the first attempt to hold 
up a stranger he was shot and killed. No one feels 
much pity when a brutal highwayman is killed. 
Yet even there we do not know. Madame de 
Stael, in one of those pungent epigrams of the 
French that are often more than half true, declared. 
"If we knew all, we should forgive all." At least 
we should learn sympathy. 

Again, if we desire to do any good with the ig- 
norant, we must find a common level through sym- 



MAN TO MAN. 35 

pathy. As you cannot really help from above, so 
you cannot teach from above. The fact that you 
know something and that you want other people to 
know that you know it does not constitute you a 
teacher. It may only make you an insufferable 
pedant. The two greatest teachers I have known 
made no pretense of learning. They worked with 
their students. They seemed to be fellow investi- 
gators, as indeed they were. The discovery of the 
facts kindled their interest and enthusiasm, as if 
they had found them for the first time. They led 
us from knowledge to knowledge, and in the inter- 
est of the study we scarcely realized how potent 
was their mastery. They understood us. They 
sympathized with our point of view. They did not 
think we were fools because we could not see things 
as they saw them. They knew how difficult it had 
once been for them. They were not teachers who 
could not be touched with the feeling of our infirm- 
ities, for they had been in all points tried like as we 
were, yet without failure. 

I am aware that I am not speaking to many who 
are teachers by profession, and so there may not 
seem much application of this truth here. Yet we 
are all teachers. Suppose you come in contact with 
a poor family. It is the most natural and the best 
kind of charity. I am a thorough believer in Asso- 
ciated Charities, but it is far better when you can do 
something wisely yourself. If you thus undertake 
to help a needy family, you become a teacher. You 



36 MAN TO MAN. 

know facts of housekeeping, cleanliness, thrift, 
economy, which they do not know. If they knew 
those things they would not be needy. It is foolish 
to be impatient with the poor, because they have 
not the methods and the virtues of the successful. 
If they had them they would not be poor. You 
are to help them because they are ignorant. You 
cannot do any good by lecturing them upon the 
methods of housekeeping. You cannot help them 
from above. Unless you have the fine instinct that 
you feel one with them, realizing that in their cir- 
cumstances, with their training and environment, 
you might be no better than they, you will not do 
them very much good. You must not instruct; you 
must suggest. You must begin from their 
point of view and lead them to the higher point of 
view. You must be interested, not simply in that 
particular case until it is disposed of, but in that 
man, in that woman, in those children. In a word, 
you can help the poor out of their ignorance into 
self-respecting stlf-support if you have the power 
of sympathy. 

We are learning this truth in our newer mission- 
ary methods. It will not do to tell people that they 
are miserable heathen, ignorant idolators, who must 
learn the truth from us. They will turn from us 
with hatred and with scorn. We must sympathize 
with them, and with their ancestral striving to 
know God. We must say to them, "There is one 
God, whom you seek and we seek. Your need and 



MAN TO MAN. 37 

longing and hope are ours also. Jesus has come 
to us and told us that God is our Father." Then 
we may tell them of Jesus. And, if we can keep 
ourselves in the background and put him forward, 
they will recognize him as brother. As Jesus found 
us, he will find them. The human interest and love 
will find them. They will respond, the heart of man 
to man, as in water face answereth to face. 

Sympathy is the condition of all teaching. It was 
Paul's method. When he said that he was all things 
to all men, if by all means he might save some, he 
did not mean that he was a double-faced or many- 
faced hypocrite, taking his cue from the company 
in which he happened to be. He uttered a profound 
pedagogical principle. He would find a common 
level with his brother man, he would get his point 
of view, come into sympathy with him, understand 
him. Thus he would lift the Jew out of his narrow 
prejudice and the Gentile out of his selfish loose- 
ness, and bring both to know Christ. 

An actor once asked me whether I preached what 
people want to hear, or what they ought to hear. I 
answered that I did not think there was much dis- 
tinction. We are willing to be told the truth if we 
are told kindly. "Speak the truth in love" is a safe 
maxim. Men are fair. They will respond to a real 
human message. The heart of man answereth to 
man. That was Jesus' power with the people. They 
wondered at the gracious words which proceeded 
out of his mouth. He spoke from a knowledge of 



38 MAN TO MAN. 

their needs. Sympathy is the prime characteristic 
of the teacher. 

I have tried to speak of sympathy with the suffer- 
ing, the sinning, the ignorant. A word should be 
added upon sympathy with the uninteresting. We 
all like interesting people. Did you ever happen at 
a public dinner with an interesting person on one 
side of you and an uninteresting person on the 
other? It is a sore trial of the Christian spirit. But 
there are more interesting people than we think. 
It is often our stupidity quite as much as theirs that 
reduces the conversation to halting question and an- 
swer. Emerson said, "Every man is my master in 
something." I know that I have learned a great 
deal on the few occasions when I have had wit 
enough to find out the bent of a man, who was not 
at first communicative. There is something that he 
would like to talk about if you can only find it out, 
and he will talk well. There is something that he 
would like to hear you talk about also. It probably 
is not the thing that you want to talk about. There 
lies the difficulty. You have not found the common 
ground, so you and he have not "got together." You 
are not in touch, you are not en rapport. To use 
our word again, you are not in sympathy with him. 

It is a rare gift, or grace let us call it, that of sym- 
pathy with uninteresting people, so as to bring out 
the best that is in them. Imagine a man of thougilt- 
fulness, intelligence, large ideas, spiritual interests, 
being obliged to associate intimately with Peter, 



MAN TO MAN. 39 

i 

Andrew, James and John, and the rest. Good- 
hearted fellows of course, but not very deep, not 
very interesting. But Jesus knew their interests. 
He put himself exactly in touch with them. From 
that first day when he used their own words, "Come 
with me and I will make you fishers of men," he 
led them from their own level towards his own. 
And I think he found them marvelously interesting. 
To be sure, they were very slow to understand him. 
Even on the Ascension mountain they wanted to 
talk Jewish politics, when he would tell them of the 
world kingdom. But Jesus talked with them on 
their own subject. And because he was willing to 
take their standpoint he was able soon to lead them 
from the thought of the restoration of the kingdom 
to the Jews to the larger thought of their apostolic 
duty to the world. The uninteresting company of 
Galilean fishermen and common folk, who would 
never have made any impression on the world if 
Jesus had not found them and been able to sympa- 
thize with them, were developed in their best in re- 
sponse to the wonderful drawing power of Jesus, 
and their names have been household words 
throughout the Christian world for fifty genera- 
tions. It is true even of the people whom we call 
stupid, dull, uninteresting, that the heart of man an- 
swereth to man, as in water face answereth to face. 
If you have the Christ-like gift of sympathy, you 
can find them. 

In a word, sympathy is unselfishness. It is the 



40 MAN TO MAN. 

Golden Rule. It is putting yourself in his place. 

Are you strong? Be very gentle with the weak. 
Help them to be stronger, and let it not be seen that 
you are helping them. Are you wise? Be very con- 
siderate with the ignorant. Do not look down upon 
them from superior knowledge, but lead them into 
light and truth, and do not make it too obtrusive 
that you are leading them. Are you upright? Be 
very tender with the sinner. Reprove him, if you 
must, sympathetically. Punish, if need be, sym- 
pathetically. Lead him to love goodness and hate 
evil. Are you prosperous? Be never ostentatious 
in the presence of those less fortunate. You will 
need rare tact to play well your part. Help, but let 
not your assistance wound the one you help. If 
you are happy, let your joy bless without obtrusion 
some less favored one. If you are sad, let not your 
sadness mar some other's joy. It is the Golden 
Rule again : 

If thou art blest, 
Then let the sunshine of thy gladness rest 
On the dark edges of each cloud that lies 
Black in thy brother's skies. 
If thou art sad, 
Still be thou in thy brother's gladness, glad. 

And what shall we gain for ourselves through 
sympathy? The blessings will come back without 
our seeking. The truth of the text works both ways 
to our happiness. If our hearts be tender and grac- 
ious, and our brother respond with a like goodness, 
then we in turn shall reflect him and, all uncon- 



MAN TO MAN. 41 

sciously, be blest. We can never give without re- 
ceiving. Like begets like. 

Do you remember the story in our childhood 
books, founded on this same fact of reflection that 
is in the text? A very little fellow looked into a 
pool of water and saw another boy. Like some folk 
older than himself, he did not like strangers, so he 
made a face at the boy. The other boy made a 
face in return. The little chap went crying to his 
mother, complaining of the ill treatment. She bade 
him try the experiment of smiling at the strange 
boy. He was a little man of the world and had no 
faith in such an unpractical way of dealing with his 
fellows, but he agreed to try. Of course the strange 
boy smiled back at him in return. The strange boy 
generally does smile back. 

No doubt it pays. Sympathy is spending oneself, 
yielding one's standpoint, forgetting one's pleasure, 
to come to< a fellow-feeling with another. But it 
pays. I think Henry Drummond, the best teacher 
of our generation in the meaning of love, has said 
somewhere, "The most honorable debtor, the most 
supremely honorable debtor in the world, is Love." 
It pays now, and it pays forever. For what more 
blessed summing up of life, what greater joy eter- 
nal, than to have come to some brother, man to 
man, and found response and led him unto better 
things. 

O may I join the choir invisible 

Of those immortal dead, who live again 

In lives made better by their presence. 



THE SECRET OF JESUS 



THE SECRET OF JESUS 

Thinkest thou that I cannot beseech my Father, 
and he shall even now send me more than twelve 
legions of angels? — [Matthew xxvi, 53.] 

A most wonderful scene : midnight in Gethsemane ; 
the paschal moon throwing deep the shadows of the 
olive trees in the garden; the eleven aroused from 
sleep, gathered about their Master, half ready to 
fight, half ready to flee; the temple guard with flar- 
ing torches, the traitor in the lead ; and in the midst 
of all, calm and self-possessed, Jesus. 

He alone is calm in all the company. The dis- 
ciples betray the conflicting emotions of fear and an- 
ger; the soldiers seem awed by the august presence, 
wishing their ungrateful task were over ; Judas is 
already uneasy with the betrayal of innocent blood. 
But Jesus, the center of the conspiracy, is master of 
the situation. 

What is the source of the serenity of Jesus in 
Gethsemane ? It is not bravado, as men in defiance of 
their enemies, have suffered agonies of torture with- 
out a groan. It is not ecstacy, as martyrs have even 
courted death, the pathway to glory. It is not indif- 
ference, as stern men accept the inevitable. 

Sometimes this moment in the life of Jesus has been 
thought of as one of sheer passivity. It is rather a 



46 THE SECRET OF JESUS. 

moment of virility. See the manhood, the poise, the 
self-possession. There is not a trace of the agony of 
spirit through which he has passed. Nor is there a 
mere submission to the assaults of wicked men. His 
complete mastery of himself is manifest in the calm 
rebuke with which he checks the ardor of the disciple 
who is ready to fight and to die for him: 

"Thinkest thou that I cannot beseech my Father, 
and he shall even now send me more than twelve 
legions of angels?" 

The calmness of his spirit is evident in the play 
of the imagination, which after his usual custom 
clothes the spiritual in material forms. The military 
guard furnishes the figure of speech in which to ex- 
press his consciousness of the overruling might of the 
Father. Man is not triumphing over God. Twelve 
brigades of Heaven are not held at bay by this platoon 
of temple soldiery. The prayer lately in the darkness 
is being answered, "Thy will, not mine, be done." 

The secret of the serenity of Jesus is to be found 
in that prayer. He had a healthy and exquisite sen- 
sitiveness to pain, sadness and unkindness. It is not 
manly to be able to endure anything, without caring 
what happens or what people say or do. That is rough 
insensibility. Our Lord had a fineness of nature with 
all his strength. He shrank from the horror of the 
betrayal, the mockery of the trial, the howling mob, 
the bitter, base ingratitude, and the cross. He loved 
friendship, and the popularity that comes of appre- 
ciation, and the comfort of happy living. And so he 
prayed, "Let this cup pass from me." 



THE SECRET OF JESUS. 47 

And yet with that strong interest in life and life's 
goodness, Jesus had the remarkable power of holding 
himself independent of every material condition. He 
was in the world, living as a man among men, subject 
to all life's vicissitudes. And yet he held himself 
so aloof from things and circumstances, so masterfully 
he used them and never allowed himself to be servant 
to them, that whatever happened he could not be 
overwhelmed. I think it was Matthew Arnold who 
spoke of the secret of Jesus to secure mastery by ut- 
ter self-renunciation. He was so completely, and in 
such an entirely healthy manner, unselfish, that he was 
invulnerable. Therefore he prayed with perfect sin- 
cerity, "nevertheless not my will." 

And with that self-renunciation, there was confi- 
dence in the Father. Jesus believed that God was 
ever near, that he had a great deal to do with this 
world. He believed that the interests of men were 
more important to God than to the men themselves, 
and that the Almighty Father would care for his 
children. His utter self-renunciation is not the sheer 
necessity, with which the shipwrecked sailor gives his 
craft to the chance of wind and wave. It is rather 
the confidence with which the captain yields the wheel 
to the pilot, who through the tortuous channel will 
bring the vessel into port. So Jesus in Gethsemane 
could pray, "Thy will be done." And rising from his 
knees he could go forth to waken his disciples, and to 
meet Judas and the soldiers, with the calmness of the 
Son of God. 

The secret of Jesus in the crisis of Gethsemane was 



48 THE SECRET OF JESUS. 

the secret of his strong, peaceful life throughout. As 
much in the boyhood home of Nazareth, and in the 
early years of his happier ministry, as in the latter 
days when he set his face steadfastly toward Jerusa- 
lem to give his life a ransom for many. 

The secret of Jesus is faith in the Father who 
knows, and loves, and rules ; and with that an enjoy- 
ment of all the brightness of life, and a confidence that 
every loss may be the means of spiritual gain. 

FAITH IN THE FATHER. 

We have all probably had illustrations of the sim- 
plicity of a child's faith in God. The child easily 
feels that God knows all about him, and all about 
his toys, and his playmates, and his hopes and fears. 
And the child believes that God is interested, for if 
God loves him how can he help being interested in 
such important matters as fill the mind of the little 
fellow? And as he is quite sure that God can do 
everything, he prays that the weather may be fine, 
and that he may have many good things, and he ex- 
pects a divine assistance in all his plays and plans. 
So long as his faith remains simple and undisturbed, 
the child believes in a 'God who knows, and loves, and 
rules. 

Jesus commended the faith of a child. And his 
own faith in the Father was as direct and simple. 
When he would tell his disciples that they should not 
worry about food and clothing, he said to them, 
"Your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need 



THE SECRET OF JESUS. 49 

of all these things." God is not too high for our small 
concerns. 

But of course the faith of the child is imperfect, 
because it is self-centered. The child thinks of God 
as he thinks of his own father, largely as a wonderful 
being who can do things for him. True christian faith 
is just as simple, but it is God-centered. It is not a 
confidence that the Father will do what we want, but 
that the Father knows our needs and will do the 
best. Out of such a faith grows self-renunciation. 
You can leave everything to a God whom you can 
trust. 

We all share the faith of Jesus so far as he him- 
self was concerned. We are as confident as even the 
Lord himself that he was safe in Gethsemane. The 
plotting Sanhedrin, the cowardly procurator, the 
brutal soldiers had no power to harm the Son of God. 
And if they were permitted to kill him, what divine 
purposes have been fulfilled thereby! And Jesus has 
seen of the travail of his soul and has been satisfied. 
But he was satisfied then. He could leave the issue 
absolutely with God, feeling that the Father knew all 
about him, and about all the circumstances, and all 
the future; that the Father loved him with an ever- 
lasting love; and that the Father was supreme. We 
look back now on those events and feel quite sure 
that God was in them. But the secret of Jesus is to 
believe in the midst of the circumstances. 

Perhaps there is no truth that every christian more 
naturally accepts as a part of his creed than that 
God may be absolutely trusted. Of course the Being 



50 THE SECRET OF JESUS. 

who knows all, and is infinitely kind, and also omni- 
potent is beyond all question trustworthy. And yet 
in practical living how easily we forget God. We 
worry over the future as if there were no providence. 
We are vexed and disturbed as if God had no part in 
our lives. We cling to things, and set our hearts on our 
desires, as if they were the supreme concern. The 
joy of self-renunciation springing from a perfect trust, 
not many of us know. 

Ruskin has beautifully shown the application of 
this principle in common life. He wrote a letter of 
advice to young girls, in which he reminded them of 
Christ's great demand of self-renunciation, but added 
that in their young lives they probably would not be 
called upon to give up houses, and lands, and par- 
ents, and home, while they would have to meet the 
annoyances of spoiling a pretty fancy-piece, and tear- 
ing a valuable handkerchief, and suffering the rude- 
ness and unkindness of companions. Then he says, 
"The one thing needful for you is that none of these 
things vex you, and spoil your evenness of temper. 
Say to yourself after prayers every morning: Whoso 
forsaketh not all that he hath cannot be my disciple." 
And he explains that to forsake all that one hath, is 
not to give it up, but to give it to the Lord to take 
care of. If he does not take care of it, it was of no 
value ; if he takes anything away, you are better with- 
out it; if he gives anything back, it is just what you 
need. 

Such a self-renunciation means self-mastery. And 



THE SECRET OF JESUS. 51 

it is not unhappy. Part of the secret of Jesus was 
the enjoyment of all the brightness of life. 

ENJOYMENT OF LIFE. 

He never gave up anything just for the sake of 
giving it up. He never thought there was any value 
in being miserable. The Son of Man came eating and 
drinking. He loved the flowers and the birds and the 
fruits. He delighted in the friendship of the cul- 
tured home at Bethany. It is in view of his supreme 
sacrifice, that the prophetic title "Man of Sorrows" 
has attached to him. But Jesus did not call himself 
the Man of Sorrows. He spoke rather of joy. 

If religion is especially self-renunciation, then Budd- 
ha may teach equally with Jesus. But Buddhism is 
repressive: let me desire nothing, for desire leads 
to all covetousness and all wickedness. The glorious 
balance of Jesus is that he can truly yield everything 
to the Father, and, at the same time, fully enjoy every 
good thing that life brings. 

There is an abiding scepticism among us that God 
does not care about our joys. Too often the heavenly 
Father is regarded as a kind of religious being apart 
from the life of the world, a kind of supreme High 
Priest, who would have us ever at devotions, and sac- 
rifices, and in attendance at the sanctuary. But God 
made the world. He made skies blue, and grass 
green, and snow dazzling white. He made all the 
colors of the flowers, and all the flavors of the fruits. 
God hid in the earth the shining metals, for which we 
dig so eagerly. He crystalized the diamond and the 



52 THE SECRET OF JESUS. 

ruby, and taught the shellfish to build the exquisite 
pearl. God created the sheep with the shaggy wool, 
that we may card for our clothing, and commanded 
the worm to spin the silken filaments for our delicate 
fabrics. God clothed the otter, the mink and the seal 
with the skins that we prize. He imprisoned the sun- 
beams of a myriad years ago, that we might liberate 
them for our warmth, and light, and power, and for 
all the colors of our garments. This is God's world. 
He made it, and saw that it was very good, and said 
to man : Have dominion. 

The secret of Jesus is to enjoy every good thing, 
only not to be so absorbed in the gift as to forget the 
giver, and not to repine if the good things do not 
come, for God knows best. 

In that same letter of Ruskin to young girls he 
bids them love pretty things, and wear bright colors 
that are becoming, and enjoy the sunshine and the 
sweetness that the days may bring; but to enjoy them 
because God sends them, and not to complain if he 
withholds them. 

How well I remember in the boyish schooldays the 
glorious half hour at noon on the old English play- 
ground, under the horse-chestnut trees. Lunch was 
dispatched in dangerously short time, and then came 
football, cricket and every fun. All too soon the bell 
rang. Then every eye sought the place where the 
head master stood, for sometimes on a sunny after- 
noon he would lift his stick, and that meant a half 
hour longer in delightful ' freedom. But the second 
bell always sent us back to work. We wished the 



THE SECRET OF JESUS. 53 

stick might have been lifted every day. But the good 
master knew best. It would have been safe to trust 
him even had there been no compulsion. The secret 
of the strong boyish life was to enjoy the fun heartily, 
and then go back to our desks to put our life blood 
into the mastery of learning. 

One afternoon Jesus started for a holiday. He and 
the disciples had earned the rest. They had been on 
a long tour, and had been separated, going two by 
two. So Jesus said: We will take the boat and go 
away from the crowd, and spend a few hours quietly 
on the eastern shore. But when they reached the 
other side, the crowd was there. Some great preachers 
would have been irritated if a vacation were spoiled. 
Jesus might have argued that this stupid crowd was 
only following him for curiosity, and for what ma- 
terial good they could get out of him ; that God had 
nothing to do with their importunity. But Jesus never 
left God out of any circumstance. His behavior in 
that single incident reveals his attitude toward life. 
He needed rest. He would greatly have enjoyed the 
green slopes of those hills in the spring time, and 
the beauty of blue Galilee. Instead of rest he was 
offered one of the most exacting days of all his min- 
istry. He accepted it with calmness and willing- 
ness, as later he accepted the hard conditions in 
Gethsemane. 

That was his secret. He could enjoy the brighter 
ways of life as the gift of the Father, or he could 
forego the joys, confident that God works all things 
well. For Jesus knew that every loss may be the 
means of spiritual gain. 



54 THE SECRET OF JESUS. 

NO LOSS WITHOUT GAIN. 

I do not think it is true that everything happens for 
the best. That is a pious phrase that we often hear, 
but it is not scriptural. Many things happen because 
of sin, and sin is never for the best. Our Lord did not 
tell Peter in the garden that it was all for the best. 
He told him that God was reigning. He said that 
the traitor and the band of soldiers, bent on wicked 
purpose, were not frustrating God. There were 
twelve legions of angels to overwhelm them if neces- 
sary. He said: We will not pray for the angels: 
God knows; there will come good even out of the 
evil. 

I think that is a most important distinction. It is 
really the distinction between fatalism and faith. It 
is the difference between Jesus and Mohammed. The 
distinction is seen strikingly in two English poets. 
Pope has the line, 

Whatever is, is right, 
a statement absolutely false, and serviceable to defend 
conservative stupidity and vested wrong. But Brown- 
ing, with noble and true optimism, sings, 

God's in his heaven, 
All's right with the world. 

That is very different, for it means that God's over- 
sight and overruling shall bring the right. 

There are sad things and bad things in life. We 
are surrounded with the mysteries of sorrow and suf- 
fering. None of us has been secure from losses, real 
losses of good things. It is a loss when a boy has to 



THE SECRET OF JESUS. 55 

leave school to support his family. If we had proper 
social conditions that would never be necessary. It is 
a loss when a man is laid aside with a contagious dis- 
ease. If we applied the rules of sanitation that would 
be avoided. It is a loss when people cheat us and 
deceive us. There are a thousand things that are 
against us, which God does not bring, and which 
would not come, if his will were done on earth as 
it is in heaven. But they do come, and they will 
come. They are losses, but they can be transformed 
into blessings. All things are not good, but all things 
work together for good to them that love God. 

We must take the world as it is. Jesus has given 
us very little philosophy about the problems of life. 
He took the world as he found it, and has shown us 
how gain may come out of every loss. 

We are here among men, friendly, helpful, inspir- 
ing, but also selfish, sinful, troublesome. We dwell 
in bodies, wonderful, vital, responsive, but also limit- 
ed, decaying. We live under physical conditions, 
beautiful, gladdening, happy, but sometimes hard and 
destructive. It is the secret of Jesus to make all of 
them helpful and none of them harmful ; to find God 
in the hunger of the wilderness and in the good cheer 
of the publican's feast ; to work out character and des- 
tiny in contact with a John and also with a Judas ; to 
be self-possessed, and mindful only of the will of 
ood, when the multitude would make him king and 
when the soldiers would arrest him in Gethsemane. 

There is nothing sinister that can happen to anyone 
who has learned this secret of Jesus. In the Hellenic 



56 THE SECRET OF JESUS. 

legend the hero, plunged in the waters of the Styx, 
was invulnerable : no weapon could harm him, no 
enemy destroy him. So is the christian who has the 
mind of Christ. 

I think of an old man who has learned the secret. 
He has fallen into evil days, for he is on trial for 
his life on a heavy, well supported charge of treason. 
But some friends are true, and they make up a little 
purse, and send it by one of their number to help him 
in his necessary expenses. It wonderfully cheers him, 
and he writes them a letter full of joy, "I have 
learned, in whatever state I am, therein to be con- 
tent. In everything and in all things have I learned 
the secret both to be filled and to be hungry, both to 
abound and to be in want. I can do all things in him 
that strengtheneth me." Perhaps he is rather a pas- 
sive character, this prisoner who simply puts up with 
the inevitable. Scarcely would you think so, if you 
had listened to his impassioned plea for liberty when 
first arrested ; and if you had seen him before the Jew- 
ish council and the Roman procurators; and heard 
him with rare skill plead, now his Jewish orthodoxy, 
and now his Roman citizenship, in his great endeavors 
for release. But his efforts have been in vain. He 
has been sent to Rome to wait the dilatory pleasure 
of the imperial court to hear his case. The mission- 
ary of the world is chained to a Roman soldier and 
confined in one small room. But he has learned the 
secret. Rich spiritual experiences come in those 
months. The most spiritual epistle ever penned comes 
from that prison. Paul has meant infinitely more to 



THE SECRET OF JESUS. 57 

the church because he was the prisoner of Jesus 
Christ. 

God makes no mistakes. The twelve legions are 
ever ready to do his bidding. Sometimes he sends 
them. Sometimes he lets the losses come, and then 
brings spiritual blessing out of them, that could have 
come no other way. 

If, through unruffled seas, 

Toward heaven we calmly sail, 
With grateful hearts, O God to thee, 

We'll own the favoring gale. 

But should the surges rise, 

And rest delay to come, 
Blest be the sorrow — kind the storm, 

Which drives us nearer home. 



WHY MAKE JUDAS THE 
TREASURER? 



WHY MAKE JUDAS THE TREASURER? 

44 Judas had the bag/'— [John xiiii 29.] 

The question has often been discussed, why Jesus 
made Judas one of his disciples. It is not enough to 
say that he knew who would betray him, and chose 
him that the prophecy might be fulfilled. No man 
was ever brought into this world predestined to sin. 
Judas was not obliged to be a traitor. Of course our 
Lord, who read the hearts of men, knew his character. 
But I think he had hope of Judas. Why not? He 
never gave up anyone as lost. Many of his warnings 
must have been directed to that man. Indeed, the 
very purpose of his statement in the upper room that 
he knew that one should betray him must have been 
to give the traitor an opportunity of confession. And 
if he had confessed, he would have found forgiveness. 
Let no one ask how God's plans could have been car- 
ried out had Judas repented. God's plans are not de- 
pendent on any man's sin. No evil deed was ever done 
in this world that God needed or desired. 

Jesus did choose Judas, when he was selecting 
twelve men especially fitted to be with him and to learn 
his thought of the Kingdom of God. There must 
have been some promise in the man. We know of him 
only that he was from Kerioth in Judea, while the 
other disciples were from Galilee. We can only con- 
jecture that in joining the apostolic band he may have 
been sincere enough, but probably with the lower 



62 WHY MAKE JUDAS THE TREASURER? 

motive that the kingdom would be profitable. He had 
the same opportunities as the rest of the disciples. He 
heard the Sermon on the Mount. He went out with 
a companion on the preaching tour, speaking the word 
of the Kingdom, healing the sick, casting out demons. 

Judas was distinguished from his fellow disciples by 
the office that he held. Thirteen men having given 
up their occupations to become itinerant preachers 
must have means of support. Some of the disciples 
may have had a little money. We know that a num- 
ber of godly women contributed funds toward the sim- 
ple expenses. Whatever they had from various sources 
was naturally put into a common store, and somebody 
must take care of it. Not Jesus, of course. It would 
be out of place for him to concern himself with the 
details of their small finance. Who should be treas- 
urer? Judas had the business ability. Then let Judas 
carry the bag. 

The besetting sin of this new treasurer was covetous- 
ness. No accounts were asked for. Nothing could be 
easier than the abstraction of small sums for his own 
use. He began to pilfer. He must have quailed when 
Jesus spoke about the covetous, and the dangers of 
that dread vice. But he hardened himself. Very like- 
ly he excused himself. Why should he give up his 
time without recompense? The officers of the King- 
dom ought to be provided for, and well. 

Judas was ambitious also. If it pleased him to be 
treasurer, it did not please him that he was not one 
of the three nearest to Jesus. And he was greatly 
troubled that the Mlaster should put so slight emphasis 



WHY MAKE JUDAS THE TREASURER? 63 

on the political and practical aspects of the Kingdom. 
The great day came on the eastern shore of the lake, 
when the hungry multitudes were seated, and the 
loaves and fishes in the Master's hands were enough 
for the five thousand. Now, indeed, the Lord was 
using his power as became him. The people began to 
question whether such a one was not their king. The 
word fell gratefully on Judas' ears. King he ought 
to be. And the disciple alreadv saw himself Lord 
Treasurer of the reconstructed Jewish kingdom. But 
Jesus threw away his chance. He let the crowd dis- 
perse. When they gathered to him again he spoke to 
them only of the bread of heaven. Judas began to 
wonder if he had chosen wrong. Dark thoughts of dis- 
appointment were in his heart. The people fell away 
from Jesus. Only the twelve remained — Judas with 
them. The Lord read his bitter disappointment. I 
think that stern word was intended for Judas as a 
warning, "Did I not choose you twelve, and one of 
you is a devil?" For the devil of covetousness and 
ambition was possessing him. 

But still he stayed. Perhaps still he hoped. At 
least he held the bag and there was opportunity of 
gain. Enmities grew around the Master. With fine 
yet hopeless loyalty Thomas said, "Let us go with him 
to Jerusalem and die with him." Judas had joined the 
apostolic band with different purpose. Yet he fol- 
lowed to Jerusalem. 

Then came that night when the fervid Mary broke 
the vase of costly ointment for the Lord. Judas could 
not conceal his annoyance at the waste. It might have 



64 WHY MAKE JUDAS THE TREASURER? 

been sold and put into the treasury — and given, of 
course, to the poor. Yes, and with a handsome per- 
centage for the expenses of administration. For at 
this point the record plainly states that Judas was a 
thief. 

But Jesus approves the waste, speaking of the per- 
fume as for his burying. It is clear that he will not 
use the means of gain that come easily to his hand. 
He is determined to refuse the leadership of the peo- 
ple and to let the rulers kill him. Why should Judas 
any longer hesitate to renounce so unprofitable a mas- 
ter. Bitter disappointment indeed. He had hoped 
so much. And then the fiendish scheme suggests it- 
self to make at least some profit out of the renuncia- 
tion. Judas goes to the priests and asks them, "What 
will you give?" His besetting vice has reached its 
last possibility of enormity. He will sell his master 
for silver. How easy the progress of sin : covetous- 
ness, sordid view of the kingdom, pilfering from the 
bag — a thief — a traitor. 

Then why did Jesus give Judas the bag? When 
a man was already liable to the sin of covetousness, 
why make him the treasurer of the little society ? Why 
not keep money out of his fingers, watch over him, 
compel him to be honest? It is with us a settled 
maxim of Christian influence that temptation should 
not be put in the way of the unstable. But Jesus did 
not put temptation in Judas' way. He put victory in 
his way. As if he had said : "Judas, you have the 
petty miserable sin of loving money better than truth 
and honor lurking in your heart. Come with me. 



WHY MAKE JUDAS THE TREASURER? " 65 

I trust you. Carry the bag. It is your chance to be 
a man/' 

He must conquer or fall with the bag. He must 
meet the trial. But not alone. He must meet it in 
the presence and companionship of Jesus. He is to 
carry that dangerous treasurer's bag under the in- 
spiration and influence, with the prayer and help, 
with the kindly warning and loving encouragement of 
Jesus. In the company of Jesus he must carry it to 
victory or failure. And so must we. It is 

THE TEST OF THE BAG. 

The conditions of life are those of conflict with 
temptation. To become a Christian does not mean 
to be removed from temptation. It is certain that we 
shall be subject to its fierce assaults. 

Are you hot tempered, my friend ? God will not re- 
move you to an Eden of delight, where nothing shall 
ruffle your sensitive spirit. There will be something 
to test you to-morrow. There will be something to 
swear at in the morning, some one to quarrel with at 
noon, some one to bully in the evening. You will meet 
men and women and things at a thousand points of ir- 
ritation, and will have every opportunity of breaking 
into anger. 

Are } 7 ou naturally idle? You will not be brought 
into circumstances where every effort is delightful and 
finds immediate reward. It will be hard to get up 
to-morrow. There will be monotonous duties to per- 
form and a dozen opportunities to shirk will be 
afforded. 



66 WHY MAKE JUDAS THE TREASURER? 

Are you tempted to impurity? You cannot be re- 
moved to conditions where the passions of the flesh 
are extinguished and purity of heart is inevitable. Evil 
suggestions shall come to-morrow. Unexpected means 
of self-indulgence may be afforded. It is the condi- 
tion of life. 

Are you covetous? You shall carry the bag. Of 
course, it is dangerous. You would be safer if it were 
taken away from you. But it shall not be taken away 
from you. 

Why should things be so? Why not remove the 
causes of ill temper, and the incentives to idleness, and 
the suggestions of all that is shameful and the oppor- 
tunity of every sin? Why not order the world so that 
naturally, spontaneously, even inevitably we should be 
good ? Well, I suppose, because such conditions would 
not make men. And God wants men. 

I am not much of a mechanic yet, but I often re- 
member with amusement one of my early attempts at 
carpentering. When quite a little boy, I had some 
chickens, for which it was necessary to provide a run. 
I built a fence. It looked fairly well when I had fin- 
ished it. It would probably have answered my pur- 
pose satisfactorily, but unfortunately somebody leaned 
against it, and it broke. It was not meant for people 
to lean against. It was only intended to restrain the 
roving propensities of a few chickens. But what is 
the good of a fence that will not stand some strain? 
And what is the good of a man, if he cannot stand the 
strain of life? Make him the treasurer, give him the 
bag, send him out into life's difficulties.. He must con- 



WHY MAKE JUDAS THE TREASURER? 67 

quer or fall. It is the only hope of his manhood. If 
he cannot be a man with the bag, he can never be at 
man at all. 

It is strange, of course, how easily the opportunities 
of sin are provided. The world seems to be made so 
that a man can go wrong if he at all desires. There is 
alcoholic intoxication. Man is so constituted as to 
make the stimulus of fermented liquors, pleasing, ani- 
mating, delightful. It cheers the heart, quickens the 
senses, promoted sociability. And nature has lavishly 
provided the means of gratifying these tastes. Almost 
every natural juice ferments if it be only let alone. Even 
savage races have easily found the art of producing 
fiery beverages. And the vice of drunkenness with 
its attendant brawls, brutalities, impoverishment, mad- 
ness, despair has rioted in the world since the begin- 
ning. 

Why create men with such cravings, and why pro- 
vide so easy means for their satisfaction? Would it 
not have been better to make men so that they would 
not care to drink, or else to make fermentation impos- 
sible? And so- we go on asking questions, until we 
come at last to the final question : why the possibility 
of evil at all? And it is a foolish question. Man is 
here, and sin is here, and God is here. God makes 
manhood through victory over sin. If there be any 
better way to make manhood we do not know it. We 
may as well take the facts as they are. Give Judas the 
bag. It cannot be kept from him. Jesus prayed "not 
that thou, wouldest take them out of the world, but 
that thou wouldest keep them from the evil." To be 



68 WHY MAKE JUDAS THE TREASURER? 

a Christian is to stay in the world and to keep from 
the evil. 

Then give him the bag. But not alone. Judas is 
not the treasurer of the apostolic band as a lonely test 
of his strength. He must have the test of the bag, 
but it is 

THE TEST IN THE FELLOWSHIP OF JESUS. 

He might have conquered. Infinite strength would 
have been given to him. That is what salvation means. 
Salvation, in its full significance, is not letting a man 
off from the penalty of his transgression. It is not a 
mere pardoning of the embezzling treasurer when his 
guilt is discovered. Salvation is power. Salvation is 
character. A man is not saved fully, strongly, till he 
can carry the bag, spite of the temptation and covetous- 
ness, and, with the sense of the fellowship of Jesus, 
finger its contents with clean hands. 

Judas was not the only covetous man whom the 
Lord called to be an apostle. Levi was a publican. 
The publicans were notorious for dishonesty. No man 
who expected to be honest would go into the publican 
business, any more than a man to-day who really be- 
lieved in the moderate use of alcohol would go into the 
saloon business. The profits of the publican were made 
by grinding the people, as the profits of the saloon keep- 
er are made through the promotion of drunkenness. 
Jesus called the grasping cheat from his place of toll, 
and Levi-Matthew with a new strange desire to be one 
of the kingdom of God, followed him. Followed him 
who had not where to lay his head. Followed him 



WHY MAKE JUDAS THE TREASURER? 69 

when he refused to be a king. Followed him on the 
last journey to Jerusalem. Fled to be sure in the fear 
of Gethsemane, but was one of the eleven who waited. 
Pie followed Jesus on the last walk to Olivet, then went 
forth into the self-denying life of an apostle. Mat- 
thew had plenty of opportunity to fall into the sin of 
a lover of money rather than a lover of God, but in the 
new power of the companionship of Jesus, he con- 
quered. 

That was the whole secret of Jesus' hope for men. 
He would call them, sinners as they were, and, by the 
mighty inspiration of his fellowship, he would lead 
them to love him better than they loved their darling 
sins. He called John. We cannot help thinking of 
the young John, so beautifully drawn for us by the 
master, painters, as a sweet and tender spirit. He 
seems to be rather meditative and made of a finer clay 
than the common run of bustling, pushing, selfish 
humanity. But of course we well know that the young 
man was nothing of the kind. If we had the full his- 
tory, we should better understand why Jesus called 
him and his fiery brother "Boanerges," sons of thun- 
der. John was high spirited, irascible. It was he, as 
we well remember, who wanted to burn up a village, 
because the people refused them hospitality. It was 
he and his brother who sought a secret pledge from 
the coming king that they might have the two highest 
places in the new administration. Jesus gently rebuked 
his ardent disciple, taught him the better way, showed 
him the kindlier spirit, loved him, and the love begat 
love. John, in the fellowship of Jesus, attained that 



yO WHY MAKE JUDAS THE TREASURER? 

greatest of all triumphs of character, the subjugation 
of an angry, self-assertive spirit. John had plenty 
of opportunity for irritation. There might easily have 
been struggle for supremacy in the early church. But 
he seems to have learned of his master, "he that would 
be greatest among you, let him be your servant." John 
conquered in the fellowship of Jesus. 

And so must we. We may as well recognize the 
fact that we shall not be removed from temptations 
in this life. If we overcome the grosser seductions, 
we shali be assailed by those subtler and even more 
dangerous. If we triumph over the sins of the flesh, 
we shall yet have to meet the sins of the spirit. But 
Jesus is here still. Like John, we need not fight 
alone. Nor need we, like Judas, fall alone. 

I know a very even tempered man. In our earlier 
acquaintance I should have classed him as one of those 
naturally mild individuals, kind of heart, simple of 
spirit, who do not know what it is to be in a rage. 
And in the later years I never saw him angry so that 
he lost his temper. But I saw him irritated. I saw 
possibilities of wrath. And I learned, what I should 
never have suspected, that temper was the man's 
besetting sin. He was too sensible a Christian 
to make the absurd excuse, which in some 
people is scarcely to be distinguished from self-ap- 
probation, "Well, I am naturally hot tempered. I 
easily flare up. But then I don't stay angry very 
long." As if it would be recommendation for a horse 
that he would occasionally run away and smash things 
but — he would not run very far. My friend knew the 



WHY MAKE JUDAS THE TREASURER? 7 1 

purpose of Jesus to save "unto the uttermost," that is, 
to the farthest reach of human need. So he lived in 
the fellowship of Jesus, and like John, learned poise 
of spirit. 

I knew a young man inclined to the more refined 
self-indulgence. His natural tastes would have led 
him to a respectable, moderate, refined, pleasure-lov- 
ing life — utterly irreproachable and almost utterly sel- 
fish. He was a Christian and he saw his need. He 
separated himself from all wrong things alluring, 
found opportunities of kindly working, and lived a 
Christian "kept by the power of God." There were 
still plenty of means of self indulgence, and I doubt 
not many a time he reproached himself for selfish love 
of ease. But in the fellowship of Jesus, he learned 
the overcoming life. 

It is the meaning of salvation. Today the drunk- 
ard walks with even steps, the woman who sinned is 
chaste, the thief steals no more. The strength of the 
world's sin is not less. It is the presence of Jesus. 
Judas may turn away to his bag, but some — some listen 
to the words of the Master. See them. These are 
tempted to pride. But they hear him saying, "Blessed 
are the poor in spirit." These are tempted to anger, 
but Jesus says, "Blessed are the meek." These others 
are naturally harsh, but the Lord reminds them, 
"Blessed are the merciful." Some are quarrelsome, 
but he has said, "Blessed are the peacemakers." These 
have darker temptings, but Christ's words come to 
them, "Blessed are the pure in heart." And these, 



72 WHY MAKE JUDAS THE TREASURER? 

so many of them, now in this wise, now in that, would 
find naturally their satisfactions in lower things, but 
the Master has told them, "Blessed are they that hun- 
ger and thirst after righteousness." And Judas, the 
covetous, might heed, if he would, for Jesus speaks so 
searchingly, "Where your treasure is there shall your 
heart be also." 

In the presence of Jesus no one need lose courage 
because of a besetting sin. Indeed, it is the glory of 
Jesus that he not only overcomes our failings, but actu- 
ally transforms them into virtues. Judas has the bag, 
not only as the test of the strength of manhood in the 
companionship of Jesus, but in order that his evil ten- 
dency may become his way to glory. 

THE BAG IS THE OPPORTUNITY. 

Every fault is only wrongly directed activity. It 
is a good thing to realize the value of money, to have 
ability to care for it and to administer it, to be eco- 
nomical, watchful against- waste, wise in accumulation. 
In the new society that Jesus was introducing, there 
would be many requirements for just the administering 
activity that Judas might develop. Doubtless Jesus 
chose him because he needed a man with his capaci- 
ties. Strong sins are indications of strong natures. 
There are certain people whom we call harmless. The 
Lord cannot do very much good in this world with 
harmless people. He would have men and women of 
strong passions, and he would make them useful by a 



WHY MAKE JUDAS THE TREASURER? 73 

process, not of mortification, but of transformation. 
So we are to glorify God in the body. 

Let us not always say 
'Spite of this flesh today 

I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole!' 
As the bird wings and sings, 
Let us cry 'All good things 

Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh 
helps soul !' 

To an Italian worker in precious stones a gentle- 
man brought a very beautiful onyx to be carved. The 
stone was perfect save for a peculiar flaw in one place, 
where it had a brownish appearance. The owner was 
fearful that this flaw would interfere with the carving 
of the stone. However, the old lapidary promised to 
do his best. When the gentleman called to find what 
the artist had been able to do with the onyx he was 
delighted to see upon it an exquisite carving of the 
goddess Diana standing upon a leopard skin. The 
blemish of the stone had given the opportunity for its 
finest beauty. 

So it might have been with Judas. So it was with 
John. The ardent, earnest young disciple became the 
noble evangelist, whose fervor was one of the mightiest 
forces in the great days of the apostolic church. Jesus 
would not crush a man's spirit; he would train it. 
Peter's rashness that might have made him unstable 
was steadied into the devoutness of him who could 
be rightly called "the rock." Nathanael's hopes that 



74 WHY MAKE JUDAS THE TREASURER? 

might have made him visionary were encouraged into 
the earnestness of the practical disciple. Thomas' 
doubts that might have set him apart into vacillating 
uncertainty, were resolved into a splendid faith. Paul's 
persecuting bigotry was transformed into the glorious 
enthusiasm of the missionary of Christ. 

Christianity is least of all negative. It is not the 
mere suppression of fault and resistance of sin. It is 
positive character and spiritual achievement. Give 
Judas the bag, not that with fear he may carry it and 
with pain resist the temptation to betray his trust. 
Give him the bag that the temptation of selfish covet- 
ousness may give way to the glory of unselfish min- 
istration. It is the purpose of Jesus. 

I hold it truth with him who sings 
To one clear harp with divers tones, 
That men may rise on stepping-stones 

Of their dead selves to higher things. 

That is salvation through Jesus, who is able to save 
unto the uttermost (to the last weakness and to the 
furthest failing) all that come unto God by him. 



AMERICAN ANTAGONISMS 



AMERICAN ANTAGONISMS 

If a house be divided against itself, that house can 
not stand. [Mark iii: 25,] 

This passage of Scripture is inseparably connected 
with Lincoln's classic use of it, "I believe this govern- 
ment cannot endure permanently, half slave and half 
free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do 
not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will 
cease to be divided." The slavery antagonism is over, 
for we have just passed the thirty-ninth anniversary of 
Appomattox. But there have arisen other antagon- 
isms in our national life, so menacing, that it behooves 
us to read again the solemn warning, "a house divided 
against itself cannot stand." 

There is the antagonism that has grown out of the 
slavery conflict. It is not now an antagonism between 
North and South, but between white and black. The 
sectional antagonism has given place to the race antag- 
onism. It is impossible to shut our eyes to its peril. 
Two races live side by side, without sympathy, with 
no possibility of union, the one feeling that the other 
must forever occupy a position of inferiority, while 
that one in its turn is embittered by what it feels to 
be oppression. The presence of any population that 
is an object of suspicion and aversion to the governing- 
race is a menace, but when that population numbers 
ten millions the menace has become a peril, for "a 
house divided against itself cannot stand." 



78 AMERICAN ANTAGONISMS. 

That perhaps is a Southern problem, although it is 
not less national because it is Southern. But we have 
our antagonism in the North, not of race but of class. 
It has been our boast in America that we were free 
from distinctions of caste. We have always had our 
good families, people of means, culture and education, 
who have been our natural social leaders. But our poor 
boys have 'so constantly advanced from the farm and 
the factory to the highest places, and worth has so 
easily made its own position in American life, that we 
have felt secure from class antagonisms. There should 
be no patricians and plebeians, no aristocrats and com- 
mon folk among us. We have been glad to say "a 
man's a man for a' that." We have hated the snobbery 
that still exists even in democratic England, where a 
social expert by asking who your father and grand- 
father were, what business you are engaged in, how 
much money you have, where you live and what 
church you attend, can classify you to a nicety as 
belonging a trifle above the seventh, but not quite up 
to the sixth layer in the social pyramid. But if we are 
fairly free from snobbery, except among our Four 
Hundreds, who do not count much in American life, 
we are coming to something else that may be worse. 
We are coming to have a distinction amounting to a 
real antagonism between those, on the one hand, who 
earn a living by the manual trades, and those, on the 
other hand, who either in large or in small measure 
are employers of labor. There are influential news- 
papers today whose main purpose is to stir hatred. 



AMERICAN ANTAGONISMS. 79 

There will be thousands of meetings this Sunday after- 
noon, where the wrongs and the rights of labor will 
be the one subject of discussion and where the one 
aim will be to devise means for compelling recognition 
of these wrongs and rights. 

We cannot forget also that there will be other meet- 
ings held this week, probably not on Sunday, and cer- 
tainly not advertised in the newspapers, where small 
companies of gentlemen will discuss the ways and 
means of levying illegal tribute on the whole body of 
the people; tribute upon all that they eat, upon the 
fuel they burn, upon the clothes they wear, upon the 
books they read, upon the medicines necessary to save 
life; tribute purely for selfish profit, in defiance of the 
law of the land and in utter contempt and disregard 
of the striving, struggling mass of the American peo- 
ple. Here is an economic antagonism, so> grave, so 
growing, that the thoughtful man may well say over 
to himself, "a house divided against itself cannot 
stand." 

See another antagonism. The great ocean liner en- 
ters New York harbor. There are Americans returning 
from the European pilgrimage. There are foreign 
visitors coming to see the new world. Perhaps there 
is a distinguished professor in fulfilment of an engage- 
ment to lecture at an American University. And then 
there is the large steerage contingent. Rather miser- 
able people. They are homesick and most of them have 
been sea-sick. A few have come to meet friends, but 
most have simply come under that impulse that has 
been stirring men from the beginning to arise and get 



80 AMERICAN ANTAGONISMS. 

them out to far countries where there is promise of a 
better chance. 

See them as they leave the ship at Ellis Island with 
their worldly possessions tied in bundles and slung 
across their shoulders. There are young men, and 
men with families, and mothers with children in their 
arms and at their skirts. They have come to the new 
strange land and they do not understand much about 
it. They are formed in line for inspection to see if 
they fulfil the slight requirements imposed on incom- 
ing American citizens. They must be healthy and give 
evidence of being able to make some kind of living. 
It does not matter whether they can read or write, or 
whether they have any sort of intelligence. Of course, 
it is not necessary to have the most rudimentary notion 
of what America means. If they are not sheer paupers 
that is enough. 

Some come with tickets for farther destinations. 
These are convoyed to their trains by government offi- 
cials to protect them from the sharpers. The others 
pass out from the inspection into the streets of New 
York City. 

Here is a group of Italians. A nice Italian gentle- 
man meets them, who understands English and knows 
all about things in America and will get them work. 
They are soon employed in a railroad gang. They do 
not know that a good portion of the wages they earn 
is paid to the Italian gentleman, and that a part of that 
is paid by him to the boss. And if they find it out, 
they had best keep quiet, for they have signed contracts 
and it is almost more than life is worth to break them. 



AMERICAN ANTAGONISMS. 8 1 

So another group of Italians, speaking Italian, meet- 
ing only Italians, have formed another Italian commun- 
ity in America, and about all they know of our country 
is that they have come into a servitude from which 
there is no escape. 

These Jewish families from the steamer have found 
their way to the Jewish quarter in New York, and other 
Jewish families have crowded a little closer together 
and made room for them in the packed tenements. So 
more men, women and children are at work from early 
morning till late night, stitching, stitching the coarse 
garments that constitute the great cheap clothing in- 
dustry of America. They are among the Jews. They 
speak their strange jargon. All that they are likely 
to learn of Americanism is that the adult males have 
a vote, which is worth a dollar on election day. 

In like manner Poles, Bohemians, Hungarians, Aus- 
trians, Russians drift each into the settlement of their 
own people. They will speak their own tongues, think 
the thoughts of their own people, send their children 
to parish schools where the same language will be 
spoken. They will settle down as separate communi- 
ties, distinct from one another and from the great 
America of which they are supposed to form a part. 
Thus sixty-three languages are spoken in the city of 
New York. We know something of cosmopolitan Chi- 
cago. So are all our cities. • 

In New England, in addition to the European immi- 
gration there is a French-Canadian immigration so 
large that Sir Wilfred Laurier, the Canadian premier, 
said, "New England is on the way to be a New 



82 AMERICAN ANTAGONISMS. 

France." They do not care to become Americans. They 
speak French to the third generation. 

We must not be misled in our estimate of the mean- 
ing of immigration by the prosperous and, in many re- 
spects, admirable suburb to the west of us. There is 
a thrifty German people living away from the great 
city in a suburb of its own, where the public school 
gives education to the youth in English. We must 
think of present day immigration as consisting of 
Slavs, Latins, Jews, rather than Germanic peoples. We 
must think of a million of them coming in last year, 
140,000 of these illiterate, with all the hopeless unin- 
telligence that goes with blank illiteracy. How long 
will it take them to become Americans? How much 
do they care for Americanism? They do not under- 
stand it. American law probably touches them for the 
most part on its repressive side. Of its beneficent ef- 
fects they know little. Of its power to compel them to 
fulfil contracts which they do not understand, of its 
prohibition of vice and of its insistence upon a respect- 
able Sabbath, however poorly enforced, they know 
much. Their leaders are often socialists, who repre- 
sent America to them as under the oppression of a 
tyrannical commercial class. There is little, very little, 
to lead the mass of present day immigrants tc become 
intelligent and patriotic American citizens. 

The question before us is whether a congeries of sep- 
arate people can become a nation. A clever French- 
man, after paying us a short visit recently, went home 
to say that America was not a nation. The only bonds 
of unity he found were that we all speak English and 



AMERICAN ANTAGONISMS. 83 

cliew gum. But we do not even all speak English! 
Is it too much to quote the suggestive Scripture, "a 
house divided against itself cannot stand?" There is 
not, of course, between the American and the foreigner 
such antagonism as between the white and black. The 
educated Pole or Italian is welcomed among us. To 
be sure we are not free from the anti-Semitic preju- 
dice. But the antagonism that does exist and is dan- 
gerous is between the great American population on 
the one hand and these large and increasing foreign 
communities within our borders, alien to our life and 
thought, on the other hand. 

I cannot help pressing this point a little further, 
even at the risk of being thought illiberal. We have 
a developing antagonism, I believe, of priest versus 
patriotism. A large proportion of our immigrants are 
Roman Catholics. If they retain their religion and 
do not become atheists, they go to the foreign church. 
The priest, doubtless in most cases a well meaning man, 
is a foreigner in birth, sympathy and education. He 
owns supreme allegiance to a foreign ecclesiastical 
prince. He is by religious interest and conviction op- 
posed to our American free school system. The immi- 
grants therefore, under the direction of the priest, send 
their children to the parochial school, where the in- 
struction is in a foreign tongue and where the Protest- 
ant religion, being wholly misunderstood, is misrepre- 
sented. The Polish or Italian child leaves the parish 
school wretchedly instructed in secular learning (for 
the schools are notoriously ill equipped) and fortified 
in ecclesiastical prejudice. His whole training has kept 



84 AMERICAN ANTAGONISMS. 

him a foreigner. He will vote for a foreigner for office 
because he is a foreigner and in order that the foreign 
idea may prevail. 

It is a fact to be reckoned with that Roman Catholi- 
cism, which is dead of dry rot in every Catholic coun- 
try, is setting its hope on a vigorous propaganda in 
the Anglo-Saxon countries. I am not an alarmist. I 
do not expect the Pope to transfer' his residence to 
Washington. I know that Rome has lost enormously 
in this country — probably more than half her adherents. 
But still she has ten millions of our population. Her 
hierarchy is the most remarkable organization in the 
world. She has plenty of time. And, without imput- 
ing unworthy motives to any man from the Pope to 
the parish priest, it is plain to see that the Roman Cath- 
olic idea and the American idea are antagonistic. In 
the city of Chicago has not the archbishop endeavored 
to cripple the school system by the abolition of the nor- 
mal training for teachers? And is it not significant 
that the few prelates who have tried to be Americans 
have not found favor at the Vatican? 

Another antagonism to which we have been some- 
what blind has recently been forced on our attention 
through the consideration of the United States Senate 
and through the appearance of Mormon missionaries 
in Oak Park. It is polygamy versus the Christian fam- 
ily. Our missionaries in Utah have been telling us for 
years that polygamy was taught and practised in the 
Mormon state. But we have preferred to accept the 
findings of Mormon grand juries and the statements 
of an interested press. Let me say, by ih? way, that 



AMERICAN ANTAGONISMS. 85 

it is the fashion to sneer at what missionaries report. 
But when the proofs come in, whether it be as con- 
cerns liquor selling in Manila, cruelties in the Congo 
rubber trade, vice in the English Indian army, or the 
violation of solemn constitutional provision in Utah, the 
missionaries are generally found to be right. Well, it 
is clear to the whole country now. 

Not long ago one of the Mormon apostles visited 
a school and made a gift toward a scholarship of so 
much from himself and so much from each of his two 
wives. The boys laughed. Nice training for the boys ! 
The smooth representative who came to my house had 
the impudence to defend polygamy. I reminded him 
that Paul said a bishop should be the husband of. one 
wife. "O yes," he replied, "that means at least one." 
We have been joking about this matter, but the Mor- 
mons have not been joking. They hold Utah. They 
have their hands on three or four other states around 
them. Some day they may have the balance of power 
in the United States Senate. We thought the funda- 
mental idea of the Christian family was safe in Amer- 
ica. But there has developed an antagonism. There 
is a limit beyond which it is not safe for that antagon- 
ism to extend, for "a house divided against itself can- 
not stand." 

May I speak of one other antagonism ? It does not 
very much touch us, for it is on our frontiers and we 
do not realize it. Once it was more important than 
any of those that I have mentioned — the antagonism 
of Indian versus settler. We have nothing to fear from 
the Indian now. He has been driven into the far reser- 



86 AMERICAN ANTAGONISMS. 

vations, where in paganism he is nursing his real and 
fancied wrongs. The white man is still crowding upon 
him, pushing him further and further, and the sad story 
of the poor Indian is told ever again. It is not a dan- 
gerous antagonism, but it ought to be ended for the 
credit of our nation and for the sake of the remnants 
of the red tribes which remain after the trying process 
of three hundred years of civilization. 

White versus black, workman versus employer, 
Americanism versus foreignism, polygamy versus pur- 
ity, Indian versus civilization — these are the antagon- 
isms of America. Taken together they constitute 
our peculiar problem. No nation was ever the meeting 
ground of such antagonisms, so many and so varied. 
How can they possibly be resolved ? There must be 
a way. We do not expect the house to fall, but we do 
expect that it shall cease to be divided. 

Does history teach anything? In the old Roman 
world there were two great antagonisms, one of class 
and one of race : master and slave, Jew and gentile. 
To the master, the slave was the creature of his will 
doomed to inevitable inferiority. To the slave the mas- 
ter was a tyrant. To the Jew, the gentile was alien 
in race, in creed, in destiny. It was pollution to eat 
with him. To the gentile, the Jew was a bigot, a hater 
of his kind. But a new institution came very quietly 
into the life of the old Roman world. Soon there were 
groups of men and women meeting together on the first 
day of the week. There was mingling of masters and 
slaves in those companies ; yes, even of Jews and gen- 
tiles. Children were instructed very carefully in the 



AMERICAN ANTAGONISMS. 87 

principles of truth, purity and love. The love of God 
and of men was in the hearts of those people. The 
Christians multiplied. The children in the classes of 
instruction increased a hundred-fold, a thousand-fold. 
At last the great distinctive feature in the Empire, 
breaking down all barriers of nationality and caste, 
was the Christian Church. And when the barbarians 
came down from the North and inundated Rome, the 
Church took them and taught them. Christian educa- 
tion resolved the great antagonisms of the old world. 

Christian education is the hope of America — the 
common school, the Church and the Bible school, the 
alliance of positive spiritual Christianity with earnest 
educational effort. Put the negroes out of account for 
a moment and consider the other antagonisms. The 
solution of the labor question lies with the laborers 
themselves. In the Christian spirit they can solve it. 
If the Christian idea possesses them they will proceed 
in the right way and the wise way. No Christian work- 
ing man is a very dangerous type of unionist. I am not 
of course suggesting the old plan of keeping the people 
down by preaching obedience to the existing order of 
things and teaching them a catechism, that they should 
be contented in the station of life to which it has pleased 
God to call them. I am suggesting that in Christian 
enlightenment are to be found those ideas of fairness, 
honor, generosity, brotherhood, which are needed on 
both sides of the labor antagonism. They tell us that 
Christianity has not made rich men fair or poor men 
honest. It is because there has not been enough Chris- 
tianity. 



88 AMERICAN ANTAGONISMS. 

The foreign problem absolutely yields to the evan- 
gelical church. There is no foreign problem where 
Christianity is ascendant. Drop into the Italian Bap- 
tist Church in Buffalo some festal Sunday. Those 
black eyed youngsters belong to the Sunday School. 
If you could not see them you might know their race, 
for even Christianity cannot eliminate garlic. The 
chapel is decorated with American flags. Hear the 
children sing in English, "My country, 'tis of thee." 
They are not thinking of sunny Italy, but of the land 
of Washington and of the Protestant founders. Keep 
those children in that Sunday school. Teach them our 
holy faith. Teach them in English. Reach the older 
folk, of course, in the language in which they were 
born, but teach the children in English. Your Chris- 
tian young men and women of Italian parentage will 
be no danger to the Republic. 

Our Home Missionaries are preaching the gospel in 
twenty-two languages to the parents and in English to 
the children. The children of Baptist foreigners are 
Americans. They come out of the clannish communi- 
ties into our broad American life. It seems a small 
thing to bring to bear on the incoming tide of a million 
immigrants — a chapel and a Sunday school. But it 
is enough. It will do the business. But you must have 
more than twenty-five chapels for a million immigrants. 
There's the rub. 

Roman Catholicism is not to be met by political 
anti-Catholic organizations. Preach the truth. Let 
them know. Give them the Bible. "Are you a Catho- 
lic, Mike?" "Yes, sir." "And do you prav to the 'Vir- 



AMERICAN ANTAGONISMS. 89 

gin Mary?" "No, sir." "Why, how is that?" "Well, 
you see, they were reading us a piece how Mary and 
Joseph brought Jesus up to the big cathedral and they 
lost him. And Mary was three days looking for him 
and knew nothing about him. So, says I to myself, 
if Mary knew nothing about her own son for three 
days, what does she know about Mike Maloney ?" 

Give Mike a little more of the New Testament, and 
when he has children of his own, and he will probably 
have a good many, he will send them to an American 
public school and to an American Sunday school. Lit- 
tle chapels in New England are beginning to Ameri- 
canize even the French Canadians. There is no other 
way. But as yet there are not enough little chapels. 

Olf course spiritual Christianity and enlightenment 
will end Mormonism. Already outside of Utah the 
Christian standard of purity is making itself felt upon 
the Mormons. I have seen in the South the blue mias- 
mic haze settling down at night with its death chill 
on the land. But the sun in the morning dispels it. 
If for a few years we took a fraction of the pains to 
flash the light of our Lord upon the Mormon peoples 
that their hierarchy takes to gain recruits from other 
states, we should soon see the passing of this evil fool- 
ish thing from our national life. 

It has been proved that Christian education will make 
a good citizen of the Indian. There are great qualities 
in that race. A shame that we should have treated them 
as children, feeding them and telling them to play and 
be quiet. It has been demonstrated that the Indian can 
be taught to be clean and to work. He can learn the 



90 AMERICAN ANTAGONISMS. 

love of truth. He is naturally reverent and will love 
the Great Spirit, when he is known as Heavenly Father. 
Our Indian Christians have given us a most suggestive 
characteristic word for the Christian life. They call 
it "the Jesus road." There are not wanting Indians 
of distinguished ability, and there is no reason why 
those who remain of the old tribes should not come into 
our Christian civilization. 

Now come to the Southern antagonism. Suppose 
every negro were at work at the thing he could do best. 
Suppose every negro were intelligent. Suppose the 
black people owned their little homes, cultivated their 
own little farms, and the shiftlessness and squalor of 
today should give place to orderliness and thrift. Sup- 
pose there should be added to his emotional religion 
the idea of righteousness, so that to be a Christian negro 
meant to be honorable and chaste. Just suppose such 
a transformation should take place. There might still 
be some difficult questions of social and political equal- 
ity, but would not the dangerous antagonism be ended ? 
Of course such a consummation, however devoutly to 
be wished, is far off. But the means to attain it are in 
our hands — Christian education, the training of relig- 
ious and educational leaders and the spiritual and in- 
dustrial education of the mass. 

American antagonisms are to be ended through the 
varied activities indicated by the phrase, "Home Mis- 
sions." 



WHAT IS GOOD? 



WHAT IS GOOD? 

"He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and 
what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, 
and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy 
God?"— [Micah vi: 8J 

Here is the prophetic answer to the cry of hu- 
manity seeking after God. In sacraments men have 
sought to find him, and in ceremonials to please 
him. Oppressed with the sense of the awful neces- 
sity of satisfying Deity, wretched humanity has 
even offered its own blood for atoning sacrifice. 
Centuries of heathenism cry from myriad altars drip- 
ping human blood. 

Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, 
And bow myself before the high God? 
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, 
The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? 

The prophet Micah has the answer. No need to 
prove the divine inspiration of his utterance. Its 
appeal is immediate to the conscience and the 
heart. It lifts religion out of the ceremonial into 
the ethical realm, defining goodness in terms of 
relation between man and man, between man and 
God. It condemns with its own sublime reason- 
ableness all sacramental and ritual religion as im- 
mature and unspiritual. It has been well called the 
greatest saying of the Old Testament. It breathes 



-?J_ 



94 WHAT IS GOOD? 

the spirit of Jesus Christ seven centuries before he 
came. It is God's answer to man's need, 

He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; 
And what doth the Lord require of thee, 
But to do justly, and to love mercy, 
And to walk humbly with thy God? 

Men are still seeking to know what is good. We 
believe that our Christianity is the good that the 
world needs. A very practical question for us to 
consider then is, whether our modern Christianity 
meets this divine definition of religion: justice, 
kindness and humble fellowship with God. 

The demand 

TO DO JUSTLY 

would seem so elemental and inevitable as to need 
little discussion. No one can deny the obligation 
of fair dealing without condemning himself. And 
yet a serious embarrassment of Christianity today 
is in the interpretation of honesty and fairness by 
its adherents. What is it to do justly? Of course 
it is to tell the truth, to give fair weight and fair 
measure, not to adulterate nor misrepresent. These 
run glibly off the tongue, but in practical business 
Christian men do not always find these evident 
principles so easy of application. 

A lumber dealer told me that specifications 
reached him every week calling for bids for second 
grade lumber. As a matter of fact third grade 
lumber was always used for that kind of work. 
He knew that his competitors bid on the basis of 



WHAT IS GOOD? 95 

third grade, although of course they were agreeing 
to furnish what was called for in the specifications. 
If he put in his bids on the basis of second grade 
lumber, he would never get an order. He decided to 
fall in with the prevailing custom. Was that to do 
justly? He said that it was, because he gave his 
customer what he needed and what everybody else 
would have given him. But he did not give what 
he promised. 

A few years ago I helped elect a man to the Leg- 
islature. He was an exceptional man, and we all 
expected him to take a stand against every abuse. 
He did, and we were proud of his record. But it 
transpired that he accepted the customary pass sent 
by the railroads to members of the Legislature. 
Some of his supporters thought that he ought not 
to have done so. I had a talk with him on the mat- 
ter. He said that he had not at first intended to 
accept the pass, regarding it as a kind of bribe. But 
he found that the companies simply regarded it as 
an accommodation which they were glad to furnish 
to those who were required to travel often on pub- 
lic business. The railroads asked nothing in return, 
except that they expected to be treated fairly. My 
friend did not doubt that there might be at times 
very questionable railroad lobbies, but he found that 
the principal work of the railroads at Springfield 
was to defend themselves from the assaults of ras- 
cals. A favorite method of blackmail employed by 
some of our representatives is to introduce a bill, 
which is apparently very much in the public inter- 



56 WHAT IS GOOD? 

est, but in reality is drawn so as to cause the great- 
est possible annoyance to the railroads. It is never 
intended that the measure shall pass. But the intro- 
ducer of the bill and his friends expect to be well 
paid for allowing- it to be withdrawn. My friend op- 
posed such measures with a good conscience — and 
used his pass. Was he right? There can be no doubt 
that railroad passes are a great evil. Every man 
could ride for two cents a mile if every passenger 
paid his fare. 

A few years ago a train of fourteen Pullman cars 
went down to Springfield loaded with legislators, 
office holders, office seekers, political henchmen and 
hangers-on generally. After they had passed a 
country station half way down the line, the con- 
ductor came into the car where a group of the 
statesmen were chatting and said with a grin, "Gen- 
tlemen, a blamed fool just got on this train with a 
cash ticket." Not another man had paid his fare. A 
prominent magazine writer asked the other day: 
"Where is the line at which graft begins?" 

The Southern Baptists were greatly stirred a 
few years ago over a suit brought by a prominent 
minister against a Texas railroad to recover dam- 
ages on account of injuries which he had sustained 
in a wreck. He was travelling on a clergyman's 
half fare ticket. Now the clergy permit has the 
provision that the holder shall assume all risk of 
accident without claim upon the company. Not- 
withstanding that he had signed that agreement, the 
minister sued the company and won his case, be- 



WHAT IS GOOD? 97 

cause the provision is void in law. You cannot 
make a contract to allow a company to break your 
leg. Our Southern friends said this man had dis- 
graced the ministry by violating his agreement. He 
answered that any agreement is binding only in so 
far as it is reasonable, moral and legal. What is it 
to do justly? 

One of our members told me that some years 
ago he was annoyed by a petty persecution of the 
police in his business. Every day it could be held 
that he obstructed the sidewalk in the passage of 
his goods from the wagons to the store. A five-dol- 
lar bill would keep the policeman quiet. To refuse 
to be blackmailed meant constant annoyance, fines 
and loss of time. It is not so easy to do justly in 
these days. 

Graft goes on in its myriad forms, rebates, rake- 
offs, discounts, favors, bribes. The vital danger is 
that men shall say that Christians are no better 
than other men. I raise these questions, which I 
think must be answered: Is Christianity at a pre- 
mium in business? Do you feel safer in a commer- 
cial transaction when the man with whom you are 
dealing is a prominent church member? Does the 
business world believe that Christian business men 
are in the lead in settling the difficult problems of 
commercial honor? 

The pulpit cannot tell men their duty in specific 
cases. Each man must decide for himself how to 
do justly in the complexities of modern business. 



98 WHAT IS GOOD? 

I undertake, however, to lay down these three 
principles of conduct: 

First, honesty is a high religious obligation. A 
Christian man is one who feels a great conviction 
on this matter. He may be uncertain at times about 
what he ought to do, but he cannot be indifferent. 
The man who is in for business, and in for it as 
everybody else, and who does not care about God, is 
not a Christian man. If he is not concerned about 
the demand to do justly, he is, in principle, dishon- 
est. A dishonest Christian is a contradiction in 
terms. As well talk of an ignorant scholar or a cow- 
ardly hero. 

I used to hear of a gentleman who went into a 
hardware store and asked for a spade. The shopman 
handed him one; "Is that the right size, sir?" The 
customer began to bend it, testing if it were well 
made. The merchant smiled. "Do you see the 
name on the back of that spade?" "Yes, Whitman 
Manufacturing Co.; what of it?" "Well, sir, that 
spade is made by John Whitman, and he makes a 
Christian spade. You need not be afraid of that 
breaking." I do not know whether Christian spades 
are made nowadays or not. Let us hope so, for hon- 
esty is a high religious obligation. 

The second general principle of action would be 
that wherever the issue is clear between right and 
wrong, the Christian cannot hesitate for a moment. 
No consideration of loss or inconvenience can possi- 
bly weigh. A Christian cannot do a thing that he 
knows is wrong. A young clerk called on Mr. 



WHAT IS GOOD? 99 

Campbell, of London, a while ago. He was in dif- 
ficulty. He explained that he had been selling to a 
customer a piece of antique furniture, a Louis XV. 
It was genuine, but not perfect, for it had been nec- 
essary to insert a new piece of wood to repair it. 
The customer asked if it were genuine throughout. 
The young man saw the proprietor watching him. 
If he had explained the repair, he would have 
missed the sale and have lost his place. He felt 
compelled to say that the piece was wholly genuine. 
Yet, being a Christian, he had come to his minister 
to ask him, "What would you have done?" It is no 
easier for a minister to be good than for any- 
body else, so Mr. Campbell answered him with fine 
discrimination, throwing the responsibility on the 
conscience of the young man himself, "I do not 
know what I would have done, but you know what 
you ought to have done." At that point we must 
draw the line. If in other days men were called 
upon to die for the truth, then today, if need be, 
men must fail .in business for the truth — when the 
issue is clear. Not when somebody presumes to 
tell us what to do, but when the issue is clear be- 
tween right and wrong. 

A third principle would be that where the issue 
between right and wrong is doubtful — and it often 
is — a Christian will earnestly desire to find out the 
right. It is easy to use Nelson's ruse, putting the 
telescope to the blind eye and then saying that we 
cannot see the signal. A Christian wants to know 
if the signal is flying. There is this difference be- 



IOO WHAT IS GOOD? 

tween us and Nelson, that he knew better than the 
admiral and we do not. The promise shall be ful- 
filled to us in business matters, if we will, that the 
Spirit shall guide us into all the truth. Then, 
Christianity can be nothing less than Lincoln's noble 
determination "to do the right as God gives us to 
see the right." 

I believe that the appeal of Christianity to our 
generation depends very largely upon whether 
Christian business men and workmen shall show the 
world that to be a Christian is to do justly. 

To this great fundamental demand God adds an- 
other. Goodness is 

TO LOVE MERCY 
or, as the American Revision has it, to love kind- 
ness. Here we seem to be on easier ground. Busi- 
ness may be complicated, but philanthropy is sim- 
ple. Many a man who wants to do right, yet can- 
not quite stand the strain of it in the commercial 
world, takes refuge in charity. I do not think it is 
hypocrisy when rich men, whose methods of busi- 
ness we may not be able to approve, give largely 
to charitable objects. It is not done as an offset 
to their misdeeds. I think they want to be good, 
but they want to be good the easiest way. It 
has always seemed to me unfair to say that a 
monopolist gives away a million dollars and im- 
mediately raises the price of some commodity to 
reimburse himself. I think most men who give to 
charity do so out of a good heart because they love 
mercy. If railroads give passes to legislators and 



WHAT IS GOOD? IOI 

half fares to clergymen, they are equally willing to 
give free transportation and half fares to the needy. 
The unreported charities of great corporations are 
very large. 

It is not good psychology to say that benefactions 
are done as a cloak. Men want to be good. Good- 
ness in the business sphere is too difficult, so they 
find their opportunity in the sphere of philanthropy. 
But of course that is not Christianity. It is not 
what Micah meant. We are not offered alterna- 
tives — honesty or kindness. If a man says, "I am 
just; I do my duty; I pay my debts ; let other people 
look after themselves," he is not a good man. He is 
straight, but he is not good. If another says, 
"Business is business; politics is politics; I get my 
money the way it comes the easiest, but I am glad 
to help anyone in need ; I love to succor the unfor- 
tunate and to promote any good cause," he has not 
found what is good. He is generous, but he is not 
good. Fairness and kindness may not be sep- 
arated. Christianity is two-handed — the hand of 
honor and the hand of help. 

Never were philanthropies so numerous and so 
blessed as today. But, instead of being the bright 
flower of our twentieth century Christianity, they 
would be like the beautiful dangerous poppy if they 
should dull the fundamental demand for righteous- 
ness. The labor unions have made many mistakes, 
but they have been right in their insistence that 
the poor should have justice rather than charity. 
Socialists are doubtless extreme in their doctrines, 



102 WHAT IS GOOD? 

but they are right when they demand that the people 
who make the wealth of a nation shall have what is 
theirs as a right and not as a gift. 

If we will lay it down as a proposition axiomatic, 
undebatable, forever established, that no goodness 
of heart or generosity of hand can condone the 
smallest departure from strict honor, then we may 
lay all the emphasis that is possible on this require- 
ment of our God that goodness is to love mercy. 

I come more and more to feel how much the 
world needs simply kindness. It is the oil on life's 
machinery. You know what that means if you 
have been trying to use your rusty lawn-mower this 
spring. How easily things go when everyone is 
kind. The mother who never nags, the father who 
never grumbles, children who try to be helpful, the 
mistress who is considerate and the maid who 
cares for the home — those are the prime conditions 
for a little heaven on earth. And it is easy to be 
kind. It seldom costs much. It comes back again 
thrice repaid in sunny looks and happy hearts. Be 
kind. 

A' friend was telling me about the manager. That 
cheery "Good morning" makes things brighter all 
through the office. He knows the salesmen and the 
stenographers and the boys. They are not simply 
hired help. He has an interest in them. He cares 
about their improvement. He is a busy man, but he 
finds time to be kind. If the typewriter girl is sick 
or the office boy's mother is in trouble, they know 
the manager will be kind about it. 



WHAT IS GOOD? IO3 

Kindness of course is more than charity. I sup- 
pose we must let the word charity go for the ignoble 
use to which it has come to be applied. It means 
money or goods given because the donor thinks he 
ought to help some poor wretch, who unfortunately 
is not able to help himself. It is necessary to have 
some word for that kind of giving, because un- 
doubtedly there is a good deal of it. 

Kindness is more than that. The Lord requires 
of us to love kindness. It is not a mere sense of 
duty. You may give to every beggar who bothers 
you and not really be kind. You may religiously 
set apart one-tenth of your income and yet not be 
kind. Kindness is love, compassion, interest, long- 
ing that men and women and little children may be 
happy, that the sorrowing may be comforted, the 
sick healed, the hungry fed, the naked clothed, and 
the unfortunate given the realization of human 
friendship. 

It is more than charity to be kind. Some one 
was speaking of the late Mrs. Astor's gracious habit 
of sending her carriage out with invalids who could 
not afford to pay for a drive. One of the company 
instantly remarked, "She did not send the carriage. 
She went in it. The drive was not an alms. It was 
a courtesy." 

What a long way kindness would go towards 
healing our ills, and making us friends, and bringing 
the human brotherhood for which we pray. It 
would do more than all our conventions and dis- 
cussions. 



[04 WHAT IS GOOD? 

So many gods, so many creeds, 

So many paths that wind and wind, 
When just the art of being kind 

Is all the sad world needs. 

All manner of beauties of character follow upon 
kindness. You come to have faith in men, and hope. 
You refuse to be discouraged. Peace floods your 
soul. You are companionable and gracious. You 
are accessible so that people can come to you. 
You can do your best and be of use. And (may I 
suggest it?) you keep in subjection that trouble- 
some enemy, bad temper, for you must keep your 
temper to be kind. 

What, then, is good? To do justly and to love 
mercy, to have right relations man with man. But 
we must not forget to look upward. There is a 
third requirement, 

TO WALK HUMBLY WITH THY GOD 

You have left out the glory of life if you have 
left out its religion. Some think it does not matter 
if God be left out. But is it reasonable to ignore the 
supreme fact of the universe — God? Is it grateful 
to disregard the Creator, Preserver, Redeemer? Is 
it filial to neglect the Heavenly Father? No man 
can be good without God. He may have good 
qualities, but reverence, faith, humility, love, spring 
from the fellowship with God. 

That is a beautiful Hebrew phrase, "to walk with 
is near, invisible, yet present. And the Hebrew be- 
God." The Almighty is not in heaven afar off. He 
lieved that he could live in the divine companion- 



WHAT IS GOOD? IO5 

ship. It is written of one of the old worthies that 
he walked with God, and so intimately he seemed to 
know God that when he died it seemed but a nat- 
ural passing into the closer fellowship, and the rec- 
ord reads, "he was not for God took him." 

The secret of the life of Jesus was that he walked 
with God. He never for a moment had any other 
feeling but that God was with him. He was no 
"infant crying in the night, and with no language 
but a cry." He never prayed, "God, if there be a 
God, hear me." He could say, "Father, I know that 
thou hearest me always." Therefore Jesus could do 
justly, for to know God's will and God's way were 
ever the considerations before his mind. We have 
no record of the business in the little shop at Naza- 
reth. But no doubt the work was well done there 
and all was fair. People who bought plows and 
yokes and simple furniture got their money's worth 
from the young son of Joseph. He walked with 
God in his daily toil. And because he was ever in 
the divine fellowship he loved mercy. His heart 
was tender toward his brethren, for he was in the 
Father and the Father in him. The fruit of the 
Spirit is goodness, kindness. The result of com- 
panionship with God is inevitably to be right, to 
be kind. 

To walk with God is to make him the partner in 
all of your life. To walk humbly with him is to 
make him the dominant partner. Let him have the 
controlling interest. Let him direct. 

If it seems at all that this humble companionship 



I06 WHAT IS GOOD? 

is not manly, think a little. Think of all your past. 
Let it come in review, these closing moments, be- 
fore your thought. All the years, all the striving, 
all the failing, all the thoughts and all the deeds, 
and over against it God, holy, loving, forgiving. If 
you do not feel humble, I am very sorry for you. 
John was humble, and Paul, and Augustine, and 
Francis. Do you know a great man who has ever 
walked with God, who was not humble? It is the 
humble confidence out of which comes strength. 

He rises in the morning. When he lay down to 
sleep, darkness wrapt the earth. Now the light 
of a new day has risen. No matter how the calen- 
dar reads, he says, ''This is a day that the Lord hath 
made; we will be glad and rejoice in it." It is a 
new day with a new chance and a new danger. He 
kneels in some secret place. Alone with God, he 
humbly kneels and prays : 

My Father, may I hold thee holy this day : 

May I do my part to bring blessedness to other 

men; 
May I do thy will in gladness; 
Give me what I need today; 
Forgive the past, and I forgive my brother; 
Keep me from the trials that test me ; 
When I come into the opportunity of evil, bring 

me surely through; 
I pray in the spirit of Jesus. Amen. 

And then he girds him for the duties of his home 
and calling. He walks humbly with his God that 
day. He deals justly with his fellow men and 
shows kindness from a gracious heart. He has 
learned what is good. 



A HYMN. 

(Tune Uxbridge.) 

O Mighty God, what must we bring 
To satisfy Thy great demands ? 

Would'st Thou exact some grievous thing, 
Some dear bought offering at our hands? 

Nay, Thou hast showed us what is good. 
Thy mandate is not hard to find. 
"Do justly." Oh how honor would 
With equal fairness bless mankind! 

"Love mercy," Thou hast then decreed, 

For Thou would'st have Thy children feel 
Compassion for a brother's need, 

That kindness human ills might heal. 

"Walk humbly with thy God." We pray 
That in our lives these all may be, 
Justice and kindness every day 
And humble fellowship with Thee. 

T. G. 






THE GREAT AND THE SMALL 



THE GREAT AND THE SMALL 

Seeing, they see not* — [Matthew xiii: 13,] 

Jesus repeats Isaiah's striking paradox — and with 
more significance. He was the Truth. The people 
saw him, but they did not see the truth. 

The paradox is well justified. Many people see 
without seeing. It is a well known fact, of course, 
that a baby cannot see at first, although the human 
baby is not, like some animals, born with the eyes 
shut. The eyes are open and the organs of sight are 
perfectly developed, and the images are made as truly 
on the retina as ever they will be. But the infant 
cannot see. That is to say, the images that fall upon 
his eye do not convey correct meaning to his mind. 
A baby does not cry for the moon because he is an 
irrational little creature, wanting things beyond human 
possibility, but because the moon is a pretty object 
which he supposes to be within reach. It is only 
after many experiments and failures, after a long un- 
conscious education, that he is at last able to translate, 
as it were, the images on the retina into a correct 
conception of the objects of the external world. 

In point of fact, we do not see with the eye but 
with the brain. The eye gathers up the impressions 
that fall upon it, and the brain has to learn by experi- 
ment how to interpret them. 



112 THE GREAT AND THE SMALL. 

Investigations made with adults born blind and sud- 
denly by surgical operation restored to sight have made 
clearer the gradual acquisition of this faculty of sense 
perception. One person, thus given sight for the first 
time, was very much troubled about objects with which 
he had become familiar through the sense of touch. 
A book held near him looked bigger than a house 
across the street. He could not understand it. An 
electric car, to his great surprise, became smaller as it 
receded from him. Pictures conveyed no meaning to 
him at all, for he could not see why a man in the 
foreground should be larger than a mountain in the 
background. Gradually he had to learn that distant 
objects appear smaller than those nearer, that solid 
objects have a different appearance from plane sur- 
faces; and so very slowly he acquired consciously, as 
we have all had to acquire unconsciously through the 
years of childhood, a true sense-perception of the ex- 
ternal world, the mind forming accurate judgments 
from the images presented to it by the eye. True 
vision depends on the sense of relation, the sense of 
proportion. 

This very simple truth of physical vision applies 
equally to spiritual vision. There is the difference 
however that while the experiences of life teach all of 
us in our infant years how to see things, the experi- 
ences of life do not teach everybody how to see truths, 
interests, spiritual realities. So it may still be said 
of very many that "seeing, they see not." How many 
think that little things are big, only because they are 



THE GREAT AND THE SMALL 1 1 3 

near ; and that great things are little, only because they 
are far! How many are discouraged and troubled, 
because they see something that they want and cannot 
reach it, so that all seems to them a mockery! They 
have not acquired the sense of proportion. An im- 
portant secret of happiness, of achievement, of patience 
and of power is to learn to see things as they are. 
Take for example the things that do so easily vex 
us. A cardinal lesson of wisdom is to see 

ANNOYANCES IN THEIR PROPORTION. 

It is, of course, annoying to break the handle off one 
of your best cups, when you have only half a dozen 
of them ; and very annoying indeed, and stupid besides, 
for somebody else to break it. But is it worth while 
to get into such an anger of fret and fume that you 
spoil half a morning over it? It is vexatious for the 
clerk or the delivery boy to forget something that 
you wanted for dinner, but you need not be as deeply 
stirred with indignation as if you had been assaulted 
and robbed by a highwayman. 

Every day brings its trifling annoyances. They are 
real enough of course. You cut your finger, and it is 
just the finger needed to write or sew. You lose 
a train for which you thought you started in good time. 
Persons in your employ do not work as you have a 
right to expect. The weather interferes with some 
planned event. These are real annoyances. But they 
are little things. True, "Httle things are great to 
little minds." Aye, there's the rub. Shall we cultivate 
little mindedness by allowing trifles to assume such 



1 14 THE GREAT AND THE SMALL. 

proportions that they take all the sweetness and spirit- 
uality out of life ? 

What is a cup worth — fifty cents? Well, it is a 
pity. But there must be some wear and tear in a 
house. Why not make up one's mind to it, and put 
a few dollars in the budget for breakages? Of course, 
if the car is gone you must wait for the next. But 
the most methodical cannot save every minute of the 
day. 

One does not need to acquire the easy-going, slip- 
shod manner, that it does not matter what happens. 
It does matter. The hurt, the accident, the loss, the 
failure may well ruffle the spirit. But if it be a little 
thing let it be only a little ruffling, which our good 
humor, our Christian brightness, yes, our faith in God, 
will overcome quickly. It is a grievous sin for the 
spirit to be stirred to its depths by trifles. We must 
learn the elementary lesson of spiritual perspective. 

Of very great importance is it to see 

AMUSEMENTS IN THEIR PROPORTION. 
If you want a test of yourself, go off alone for fifteen 
minutes, ask yourself a few questions, and find out 
how much you care for amusement. If you find that 
you do not care for it at all, then you may know that 
you are getting into bad ruts. You are becoming a 
drudge, or a drive, or an old fogy. There is danger 
of the loss of elasticity and of break down. You need 
recreation. Even our Lord, although living at high 
pressure in order to do a life's work in less than three 
years, tried sometimes to get away into the country for 



THE GREAT AND THE SMALL. I I 5 

a little rest. It is not a sign of health that you do 
not desire change and recreation. 

On the other hand, if your self examination reveals 
that you ardently and persistently long for amusement, 
and that your interest is more in the fun that you can 
have than in anything else, then that is a graver danger 
sign. You are becoming frivolous. Amusement is 
not to be desired passionately, for it is a little thing. 
It is good and needful and, at the proper time and in 
the proper manner, we should enjoy it to the full. 
But it is not one of the great interests of our lives. 

There are many people of whom it may be said, 
"seeing, they see not," because they cannot see any- 
thing but pleasure. Unhappily, many of the clerks in 
offices and stores, who work very hard for the little 
they earn, have such an exaggerated idea of the im- 
portance of amusement that they spend upon it all 
their money and all their leisure, to the detriment of 
their work and to the starving of the higher needs of 
the spirit. 

The principal objection to the more intoxicating 
forms of amusement is that they throw the idea of 
recreation out of proportion, till work becomes tedious, 
prayer is forgotten, and there is no hunger and thirst 
after righteousness. The danger of unduly exalting 
amusement is evident in the bad sense which at- 
taches to an otherwise good word, when you call a 
man a "sport." 

Boys and girls ought to learn this truth early. Of 
course, they should be full of fun, and should delight 



1 1 6 THE GREAT AND THE SMALL. 

in their merry games. But fun should not be the 
chief end in their minds. The most miserable of all 
children, I scarcely except the wretched children of 
the poor, are those who are allowed to devote them- 
selves entirely to their own pleasures. "Work first, 
pleasure afterwards" used to be the good old motto. 
School, study, chores if you please, as important and 
constituting the main business of life, and then plenty 
of wholesome fun to fill in. 

So we learn the right balance of interests. That 
person is happy who has just the right amount of 
amusement to keep him healthy and merry, and who 
has learned to enjoy it in the healthiest fashion. 

But we must be careful also to see 

OUR WORK IN ITS PROPORTION. 
The common duties bulk very large in our lives. The 
duties of the office, the home, the school, those common 
things that must be done every day for six, eight, ten, 
even twelve hours, naturally take so much of our time 
that we think they are the greatest things. And some- 
times when this toil is monotonous we say, "Most 
of my life is a dull, wearisome routine. I have not 
much joy or pleasure. I am a worker, that is all." 
Well, you ought to be a worker. A pity for anybody 
who is not. But your work, though it occupy ten hours 
a day, may not be your greatest interest by any means. 
Things are not big according to the time they take. 
Every man or woman who is doing any good in this 
world is spending a great deal of time in monotonous 
routine duties. Paul had to use a large part of his 



THE GREAT AND THE SMALL. 1 1 7 

day weaving tent cloth for a living. But he saw things 
in their proportion. The tent cloth weaving certainly 
occupies a very small place in his letters. An hour 
spent in encouraging his fellow Christians to be earn- 
est and faithful held a larger place in his mind than 
the six or eight hours in the daily duties of the shop. 
If life has higher objects the mere time spent and 
the labor is not the measure of what we do. An old 
Eastern story beautifully teaches the lesson of propor- 
tion : "J ac °b served seven years for Rachel, and they 
seemed unto him but a few hours for the love he had 
to her." 

We ought undoubtedly to glorify our work by seeing 
in it the opportunity of expressing the best that we 
can do in the needed work of the world. And happy 
indeed is the man or woman whose daily work is of 
the kind that such expression is possible. But if it 
be not so, then the work must not be held to be the 
most of life. I knew well a gentleman whose lot was 
for many years to be engaged in uncongenial labor 
to earn a living for his family. I heard him say with 
a sigh that it must be delightful to have a business 
that one could really enjoy. Yet, though he worked 
at his business hard and well, he never allowed it to 
fill his vision. He saw it in its proportion. It was 
only his means of livelihood. There were far higher 
interests — his home, his books, his friends, his church, 
the extending influence of a Christian man among men. 

The need of our laboring men is not only more wages, 
and is not always shorter hours and less work. Their 



1 1 8 THE GREAT AND THE SMALL. 

deeper need is a due sense of the place of work in 
life, and a proportionate idea of the greater things. The 
true way to lift the laborer's life to dignity, happiness 
and real comfort has not been very much discussed 
among them yet. 

I should like to strike deeper in this same vein and 
speak of 

FORTUNE IN ITS PROPORTION. 
Of course, inevitably we compare ourselves with others. 
And how often we make the comparison blindly. The 
world has its ready method of judging fortune. The 
first and greatest test is money — how much is he worth ? 
The second may be expressed in the general term 
"success" — has he been able to secure high position? 
No matter so much how he has attained it. The world 
has not time to consider processes; results only are 
seen. And the third test is talent — is he clever, bril- 
liant? Rich men, smart men, clever men, these the 
world honors. The rest are the common throng. If 
you are rich, you are to be envied and admired in- 
deed. If you are smart enough to climb to a good 
place, you are also to be highly esteemed. So, also, 
if you are brilliant, though this quality cannot be recog- 
nized very highly unless it be associated with financial 
success, for the world has only pity for the great 
scholar or brilliant genius, who cannot turn his talents 
into gold. 

Are we saying these are the judgments of the world? 
They are our own judgments. We compare ourselves 
with the few rich, smart, clever, who have secured 



THE GREAT AND THE SMALL. I 1 9 

their goodly share of the good things, and we murmur. 
It is about the most unchristian spirit that we can 
manifest. Jesus would say of us very sadly, "Seeing, 
they see not." We have not estimated the fortunes 
of men in their proportion. 

I read a story somewhere. One evening, into the 
dining room out of the great New York hotel came 
Squire Adams with his wife and daughter. They 
were celebrating. It was the one extravagance of the 
year, after the crops were harvested, to spend a day in 
the city and dine at the fine hotel in the evening. What 
a menu ! What a prospect ! A pity that even a coun- 
try appetite would not suffice for half the good things 
that were promised. But the squire suddenly lost 
interest in the menu. He was looking with great atten- 
tion across the room. 

"Susan, Emily, there he is. That is the man we 
were talking about. That little thin man over there. 
That is Andrew Rogers, the great financier. He is 
worth fifteen millions. And he and I went to school 
together. Why, I believe he recognizes me. He is 
coming over here. Good evening, Mr. Rogers. Proud 
to see you sir. Let me introduce you to my wife and 
daughter. Will you sit with us, sir?" 

"Thank you, I shall be very pleased," said the old 
man. He seemed a great deal older than the squire. 
He refused the menu, saying that the waiter would 
bring him some broth. 

"Yes, I have a wife and two children," he said in 
answer to an enquiry. "They are abroad. My daugh- 



120 THE GREAT AND THE SMALL. 

ter is to be presented at court shortly. My son is shoot- 
ing in Scotland, I think, this month. They are not 
often in America." 

He listened as they talked of the old town; smiled 
as the squire ventured to remind him of their work 
together in the hay-field ; smiled a little cynically when 
the good farmer spoke of him as the most successful 
man that the town had produced in its history. He 
sat with them through their meal and then wished the 
simple family good-night. 

The magnate went to his handsome apartments in 
the hotel. It was all the home he had. He could not 
help thinking of the kind of home to which that farmer 
with his wife and daughter would return next day. 
How strange to have a wife and daughter who would 
care for a man and make a home. Adams had married 
the girl he loved in his youth. The Wall Street man 
had waited till he could marry the rich society woman. 
And now his daughter wanted an earl with a coronet. 

Strange, unspoken longings filled his heart. He 
thought of the old church. He had not had time for 
church while he was making the fifteen millions. He 
fell asleep. He dreamed of his mother tucking him 
in and saying the evening prayer. 

The papers announced a few weeks afterwards the 
death of the celebrated financier produced by nervous 
overstrain. Squire Adams read the report and shook 
his head. "What a fortune that man made. When I 
think how many of the good things of life he had, and 
how few have fallen to my lot, it is hard to understand 
the dealings of Providence." Seeing, they see not. 



THE GREAT AND THE SMALL, 121 

What do we, measuring ourselves by our neighbors, 
to our disadvantage ? The best things this life can offer 
are for the many — home, love, goodness, hope. A 
man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things 
that he possesseth. But how few of us have eyes to 
see that evident truth. We are fools enough to accept 
the world's estimate of values, the world that counted 
Jesus and Paul to be failures, and has never recognized 
its best succeeding children till they were dead. 

But so far we have been thinking of the comfortably 
circumstanced. It may be admitted that home, love, 
health, friends, simple comforts are best. But what if 
these are lost? Can we see 

OUR SORROWS IN THEIR PROPORTION? 
If pain or sorrow be with us they fill our thoughts. 
There can be no circumstance of happiness if I have 
an aching nerve. There can be no compensating joy if 
I am bereft of my friend. The easy philosophy of con- 
tentment that I have just been trying to preach breaks 
down in the case of thousands, who are not concerned 
about the man with the great fortune, but are envying 
the neighbor who has enough bread and meat for the 
next meal. What of the family of the poor, when the 
bread-winner is sick, and the coal bin and the larder 
empty in the winter time? 

I am free to confess that these problems are too 
much for me. I find no solution that is limited to 
earth. But men with inspired vision have seen and de- 
clared unto us that sorrow and pain are not the great- 
est realities, for "the sufferings of this present time are 



122 THE GREAT AND THE SMALL. 

not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall 
be revealed to usward ;" "for our light affliction, which 
is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceed- 
ing and eternal weight of glory; while we look not at 
the things which are seen, but at the things which are 
not seen : for the things which are seen are temporal ; 
but the things which are not seen are eternal." 

There is your proportion — time :eternity. For my 
own part, I see no satisfaction in a religion which can 
dispense with immortality. Men have said that we in- 
vent immortality to explain the contradictions of this 
present life. But we do not need to invent it. It is in- 
volved in the very idea of personal relation to God. 
"The Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit, 
that we are the children of God ; and if children, then 
heirs: heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ; if 
so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also 
glorified with him." 

Immortality gave Jesus the true perspective, and the 
great words just quoted are from Paul. And John, out 
of the persecution that tortured and slaughtered the hap- 
less Christians saw, for he had eyes to see, "Who are 
these that are arrayed in white robes ? . . . . These are 
they that came out of the great tribulation, and they 
washed their robes and made them white in the blood of 
the Lamb .... They shall hunger no more, neither thirst 
any more; neither shall the sun strike upon them, nor 
any heat .... and God shall wipe away every tear from 
their eyes." The things that seem great are not always 
the greatest ; nor the things that seem far are the least. 



THE GREAT AND THE SMALL. 1 23 

Browning has strikingly suggested how the values of 
earth are changed to a man who has realized the eternal 
meaning of things. The Arab physician meets Laza- 
rus, who had been dead three days and had come back 
to earth from the beyond. Lazarus does not see as 
we see. Some things that mightily disturb us, he 
knows are insignificant. Others that we do not note, 
he recognizes to be of highest moment. The puzzled 
physician says : 

The man is witless of the size, the sum, 
The value in proportion of all things, 
Or whether it be little or be much. 

But the poet would have us think otherwise. Spiritual 
perspective determines what is really little, what is 
really much. 

As the last and best lesson of spiritual vision we may 
come to see 

OUR RELIGION IN ITS PROPORTION. 

Not all that is religious is great. All that is formal 
and ceremonial, our attendance at church, our obser- 
vance of religious customs, our conventional contribu- 
tions — these, good in their way, are not of the essence 
of the religious life. Jesus never puts the emphasis 
upon them. He points out a widow, who in great de- 
votion is giving her last coin. He pronounces blessing 
upon the cup of cold water given in love. He endorses 
the prophetic estimate that mercy is better than sac- 
rifice. He insists that not the right place but the right 
spirit makes true worship. He sees things, not as they 
seem, but as they are. 



124 THE GREAT AND THE SMALL. 

Jesus said to the disciples, "Blessed are your eyes 
for they see." If we will be his disciples we may see 
religion, sorrows, fortune, work, pleasure, vexations, 
all that comes to us, in the true proportion. 

Trying to learn this Christian philosophy of the 
balanced life, I have thought of it like this : 

Not much of wild enthusiasm, 

But a hopeful, earnest striving. 
Not much of gay excitement, 

But a happy, joyous brightness. 
Not much of fretting and anger, 

But a cheerful endurance of worries. 
Not much of sullen drudgery, 

But hard work, the price of life's blessing. 
Not much of clutching for baubles, 

But a worthy ambition for high things. 
Not much of despair and heart breaking, 

But a sorrow that hopes and is patient. 
Not forgetful of anise and cummin, 

Yet -mindful of faith, truth and mercy. 
The life of the Christ in proportion, 

Beholding all things in their measure. 
The things that are seen, merely temporal, 

The things that are not seen, eternal. 



IS CHRISTIANITY THE FINAL 
RELIGION? 



IS CHRISTIANITY THE FINAL 
RELIGION? 

"Art Thou He that cometh, or look we for another?" 
— [Matthew xi: 3*] 

There was a report current some time ago that an 
official committee had been sent from Japan to investi- 
gate the Christian religion in England and America 
with a view to ascertaining whether it could be called 
a success. Like many a newspaper report it probably 
had no foundation whatever. But one cannot help 
wondering : what if such a committee were appointed ? 
what if the world should ask the question, "Is Chris- 
tianity the final and successful religion ?'" 

There have been many religions and most of them 
have contained some truth. Many of them have been 
uplifting. Christianity makes claim to be greater than 
all, the full revelation of the Father, the last and best 
expression of God to men. Such a claim cannot be ad- 
mitted without serious question. Christianity must 
meet the question. 

There was actually appointed once a committee of 
investigation. No doubt was entertained that the re- 
ligion of Jesus Christ was good. The point of uncer- 
tainty was whether it was the best that should be. After 
the many attempts to know God, was Jesus the com- 
plete revelator, or would there be other and greater 
prophets after him? The committee was sent by John 



128 IS CHRISTIANITY THE FINAL RELIGION ? 

the Baptist, and it came straight to Jesus to put the 
question, "Art thou he that cometh, or look we for 
another?" The Lord accepted the challenge. He 
found no fault with the enquiry. He never objects to 
an earnest investigation. His answer to the committee 
was not speculative but practical. He bade them see 
and hear and judge for themselves. "Go and tell John 
the things which ye hear and see: the blind receive 
their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, 
and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the 
poor have good tidings preached to them." That is to 
say, Jesus declared that Christianity is a message and a 
ministry. He bade the enquirers hear the message and 
note the ministry, and judge if he were the sent of 
God, or whether the world must wait for another. 

Our holy religion must meet the question still, "Art 
thou the great faith, the saying faith for a sinning and 
sorrowing world, art thou the religion perfectly, 
finally divine, or must we count Christianity as one of 
the many searchings after God, and still look for an- 
other?" The only answer that we can give is that of 
our Lord. We must say, "Hear and see; listen to the 
divine message, behold the human ministry." The mes- 
sage is that God is love; God is Father and Saviour, 
loving his children, saving his people to the reach of 
infinite sacrifice, and inviting all men to come to him 
and to be partakers of the divine nature. And the 
ministry is the service of love, helping the weak, cheer- 
ing the despondent, healing the sick, lending a hand to 
the toiling, doing deeds of kindness. Christianity is 
the grace of God and the graciousness of God's chil 



IS CHRISTIANITY THE FINAL RELIGION ? 1 29 

dren. The world needs his grace and sorely needs our 
graciousness, and it will form its estimate of our relig- 
ion according as it hears and sees. 

When we attempt therefore to answer the question 
that we have set out to consider, we do not need to go 
into the field of theology, but must ask whether we 
who profess and call ourselves Christians have a word 
to tell that is so good, and a service to render that is so 
blessed, that the world need wait for nothing better. 

Jesus said that in his day the poor had good tidings 
preached to them. Probably he meant not only the 
poor in worldly goods but also the poor in spiritual 
estate. Perhaps we should not dare to speak as confi- 
dently as he. Our problem of evangelism comes be- 
fore us. We are quite sure that God so loved the 
world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whoso- 
ever believeth on him might not perish, but have eternal 
life. But we are not so sure how we can let people 
know it. It is the old, old story, and people are sup- 
posed to have heard it. But they have not heard so 
that they must heed. The story is still to be told so 
winningly and so convincingly that men will believe. 
And that is our problem of evangelism. 

Christians have been saying that the only way to 
answer the question: "Is Christianity the final relig- 
ion ?" is by a genuine revival. Some are looking for a 
Twentieth Century Moody, who will lead us. Thev 
feel that there must be a clarion voice that 
will ring above the roar of the street, and 
above the din of commerce, and above the 
buzz of society. They are waiting for some 



130 IS CHRISTIANITY THE FINAL RELIGION ? 

voice to speak that will compel attention and make the 
people hear. Some are looking for the great evangelist 
who will preach the old theology in its old power and 
bring sceptical men to their knees. Others are hoping 
for a new prophet who will formulate the new theology 
so that it shall be a positive convicting power to bring 
men to God. 

But Jesus was not a clarion voice in Galilee. The 
prophet who could thunder to the thousands was in 
prison, to lift his mighty call no more. Jesus was 
going through the towns and villages of Galilee telling 
the good tidings of divine love. I have an idea that 
when the five thousand were gathered to him on the 
eastern shore of the lake, he did not speak to them as 
a modern orator would make himself heard by a great 
audience. The narrative seems to read as if he went 
among them, talking to this group and to that, healing, 
helping, encouraging. 

Jesus never put stress on great meetings and stir- 
ring eloquence. And we do not need to wait for the 
mighty leader of the Twentieth Century Revival in 
order to make it evident that Christianity is the re- 
ligion for men because of the divineness of its mes- 
sage. 

In a young man's room, half a dozen companions 
were spending the evening. It was a typical young- 
man's room. A couple of baseball bats were crossed 
on the wall ; a tennis racket hung near them ; the golf 
sticks were in the corner; a pennant was over the 
bureau; and the pictures of two young ladies stood 
on the table. There was no evidence of tobacco there, 



IS CHRISTIANITY THE FINAL RELIGION ? I3I 

by the way. The fellows had been chatting about the 
prospects of the several leading football teams. At 
last as they were about to break up, one of them said, 
"Now fellows about the Sunday School class. We 
have often talked of Jim. I am sure he is not satisfied 
while he is not a Christian. What can we do to help 
him?" Immediately they fell to the discussion in the 
same frank and manly way that they had talked of 
the athletics. They made some plans, and before they 
separated they had a little prayer together. Next day 
one of the young men took the opportunity to lunch 
with Jim down town, for they were all in business. In 
a friendly way he said a few words to him about his 
own Christian life and expressed the hope that his 
friend might see the helpfulness of living with God. 
Later in the week another of the fellows wrote Jim a 
letter saying that he had had it in mind for some time 
to tell him how much he had been strengthened and 
satisfied since he had become a Christian, and he hoped 
the same for his friend. Another invited him to the 
ball game on Saturday afternoon, and then made an 
appointment to go with him to church next day. Those 
young men besieged their friend as carefully and with 
as much tact and courage as a besieging army before 
a fortress. At last the time was ready for one of them 
to ask him straightly if he would give his life to the 
Lord. They won him. It took several weeks and much 
thought and prayer. I am not sure whether they be- 
lieved in the old theology or the new. And I am quite 
sure that it did not matter. The boy had not realized 
in his heart that God Almiefhtv ca^.d for him. would 



132 IS CHRISTIANITY THE FINAL RELIGION? 

forgive him, would save him from himself and from 
all evil, and would build him into the manhood of 
Jesus Christ. And perhaps it was only his own com- 
panions who could tell him so that he would under- 
stand it. 

I am coming to feel that this, and about only this, 
is the solution of the problem of evangelism. We can- 
not reach men from the pulpit very much. It is too 
far off. The pulpit will have its place of inspiration 
and instruction and appeal. But the telling of the old, 
old story of Jesus and his love is far the most effective 
when it is from man to man, from friend to friend. One 
of our religious leaders has called it "conversational 
evangelism." As you would tell a man that your own 
town is a good place for residence, as you would intro- 
duce your friend to the wise conscientious lawyer who 
would care for his interests, as you would recommend 
tfae physician who had saved your life, so simply, 
frankly, earnestly you tell that Jesus Christ is the Way, 
the Truth, the Life. 

Some enthusiastic people who have had zeal with- 
out knowledge have pursued what has been called 
"personal work" so officiously as to bring discredit 
upon such effort. Indeed it is noticeable that among 
more thoughtful men this hackneyed phrase is seldom 
used, and words are substituted more expressive of the 
loving interest of friend with friend. We need not 
march up to a stranger with the challenge "Are you 
saved ?" But as Paul talked with his companions in the 
weaving shop of Aquila at Corinth, as he kindly coun- 
selled Onesimus at Rome, as he spoke always with an 



IS CHRISTIANITY THE FINAL RELIGION ? 1 33 

earnestness which was begotten of his realization that 
he had good news to tell, so may we, all of us, tell 
people what we know of Jesus Christ. 

We believe in the gospel. We are very sure that 
the divine message of God's love through Jesus is 
enough to heal the world of all its ills. And if ever 
the world itself shall really hear the gospel it will be 
satisfied. Men will know that the salvation that should 
come has come, and they need not look for another. 
The gospel, as Jesus said, is its own divine credential. 

But Jesus added a human credential also. He bade 
the disciples of John see the gracious ministry as well 
as hearken to the message of good cheer. And in our 
attempt to answer practically the challenge of the world, 
we must couple with our gospel a genuine human min- 
istry. 

Christianity is a service. Jesus was willing to rest 
the case on the evident results. "Go and tell John how 
we are blessing people, easing their cares, bringing joy 
instead of pain." He said to his disciples, when he 
would explain to them the very meaning of his life, 
"I am among you as one that serveth." Ruskin has 
reminded us with a touch of sarcasm how strangely we 
have misapplied the word. When we go to church for 
comfort, help, inspiration, we call it divine service: 
though at church we are serving nobody, unless it be 
ourselves. 

There was a little girl — this is a true story, not a 
sermon illustration, I know all about it — who always 
came to Sunday School at nine o'clock and remained 
to church. She enjoyed the meeting and she under- 



134 IS CHRISTIANITY THE FINAL RELIGION: 

stood the sermon. I do not know whether it was be- 
cause she was a very bright little girl, or because that 
preacher knew how to talk so that children would un- 
derstand him. She had noticed that the minister's 
wife was seldom there. One day speaking to her of the 
sermon she said, "I wish you had heard the sermon 
last Sunday. It did me so much good. I have won- 
dered why you have to stay away. Is it because of the 
baby? Would you trust him with me next Sunday, 
while you go to church?" The lady was happy enough 
and gracious enough to accept the offer. Next Sun- 
day morning saw the girl tending the baby. As the 
little fellow was very quiet in his cradle in the kitchen, 
our young exponent of practical Christianity looked 
around for something else to do. She saw that the 
breakfast dishes had not been washed. Ministers' 
families do not always get up early enough for all 
those things to be done. So she washed the dishes and 
laid the table for dinner. The minister's wife did not 
go to the service. She went to the worship and the 
sermon. It was the little girl who was at divine ser- 
vice that morning. She repeated the goodly office for 
a Sunday or two. Then some of the other girls found 
it out and wanted to help.- Then they found some 
other mothers who were kept away from the house of 
the Lord to care for their babies, and so the kindly min- 
istry was extended. There are so many ways, if we only 
would think. 

One }^oung lady found her place of ministry in a 
very simple direction. She did not attempt anything 
ambitious, that would soon be too much for her. She 



IS CHRISTIANITY THE FINAL RELIGION ? 135 

found that she could spend a couple of hours one after- 
noon in the week at the hospital. Out of her pocket 
money she could buy a little fruit for each of the pa- 
tients in the women's ward. One day she had left a 
golden orange at each bedside. The nurse passing the 
bed of one of the patients soon afterwards said, "I 
think I must take this away. It would not do for you to 
eat any fruit yet." But the sufferer answered her, "Oh, 
don't take it away. I am not going to eat it. I just 
like to look at it and feel that somebody thought of 
me." We need not be afraid of all the investigating 
committees in the world, if Christianity can make the 
sufferers realize that we are thinking of them and seek- 
ing to help. 

I should like to tell how a young man, whom some 
of us know well, followed Jesus in the path of ser- 
vice. He was a mail carrier. The conditions of that 
employment are such that it is often possible to get a 
day off or a half day, losing pay for the time of course. 
This young man had a class of boys at the Sunday 
School. He would sometimes take a day from his work 
and spend it with the lads in a picnic by the river. O'r 
he would use an afternoon at home in preparing to 
give them a good time at his house in the evening. It 
was a fine combination of the message and the minis- 
try. Somebody praised him for it. Said he, "Well it 
is all I can do. I have been a boy and I know what 
they like. I want to bring them to Christ and give 
them a good time." 

How easily we might make more of our Missions. 
Teaching and preaching are the Lord's work on Sim- 



1 36 IS CHRISTIANITY THE FINAL RELIGION ? 

day of course. But there might be some good thing 
every day in the week. There could be a night school. 
Some of the High school graduates could give an 
evening a week to teach arithmetic, history, English 
to the boys who have been obliged to give up work 
too soon and are poorly educated. Another evening 
might be devoted to games, and some fine young fel- 
low, one of the honorary High school graduates, who 
would not shine particularly in the intellectual branches 
might spend an evening with the boys in bright, whole- 
some amusement. One of the good athletes could 
conduct a weekly gymnasium class. Some of the ladies 
might start a sewing and cooking school. There is 
enough talent in the home church to conduct a thor- 
oughly modern institutional mission, and to manifest 
the spirit of Christ to a whole community. "I am among 
you as one that serveth.'* 

Everybody can do something. A poor widow, who 
had to take care of her house and do everything for 
herself, gathered together a Sunday School home de- 
partment of over three hundred members. She visited 
each of them every quarter. Her helpful kindly visits 
resulted in conversions, and in unknown religious com- 
fort to the shut-in and often neglected ones. 

Even busy people can do something. And because 
they are busy the world will be the more impressed 
by their goodness. Gladstone wrote a letter in 1845 to 
a college friend. He was then thirty-six years of age, 
and already in the full vigor of his busy life. He was 
prominent in Parliament, an earnest student of the stir- 
ring questions of the day. He had abundant literary 



IS CHRISTIANITY THE FINAL RELIGION t 1 37 

employment and was engaged in innumerable activi- 
ties. He wrote, ''It is difficult to satisfy the demands 
of duty to the poor by money alone. On the other 
hand, it is extremely hard for me to give them much 
in the shape of time and thought, for both with me are 
already tasked up to and beyond their powers. . . . 
I wish we could execute some plan which, without de- 
manding much time, would entail the discharge of 
some humble and humbling office. . . . Let us go 
to work as in the young days of the College plan, but 
wit;h a more direct and less ambitious purpose." In the 
College days of course he had enthusiastic projects of 
uplifting the masses. But many a man when he finds 
that great and conspicuous things cannot be done falls 
back and does nothing, or he gives some money for 
other people to do it. Gladstone did not commit either 
unchristian error. I do not know whether the often 
told story of his being found reading to the newsboy is 
authentic. But some helpful, gracious thing regularly 
he performed as a part of his life as a Christian. 

And there is the point of importance. It is the regu- 
larity, the untiring steadiness of Christian ministering 
that counts. There are plenty of people who will do a 
good thing once. But Christianity cannot show its 
spirit of love to the world by occasional spurts of 
beneficence. It is not so important that we undertake 
a great thing as that we undertake something and do 
that, come what may. 

We have a great Christian force. We often take 
comfort from a contemplation of the statistics of the 
evangelical bodies. But the world does not get the 



I38 IS CHRISTIANITY THE FINAL RELIGION? 

impression of our millions. The church ought to learn 
a lesson from the recent developments in warfare. Two 
small nations have astonished humanity by their 
achievements. England laughed at the idea of serious 
difficulty in defeating the Boers, yet she was obliged 
to spend her strength to its utmost to conquer them. 
Russia thought it absurd that there could be resistance 
from Japan. But the little Island Empire actually ex- 
pects to win in Manchuria, though the fight be pro- 
longed ten years. And the secret of the Boers and the 
Japanese is the lesson of modern warfare — the ef- 
fectiveness of the individual soldier, an effectiveness 
which consists in power of initiative and ability in ex- 
ecution. It is not enough to have great armies and 
fine display. There must be men who can think and 
act. The mighty Christian army must learn that se- 
cret. Our numbers are great enough to evangelize the 
world in a generation. But the increase of individual 
effectiveness is the vital need. 

Each Christian must cultivate the power of initia- 
tive. I should like to put that so that the boys and 
girls can understand it. It means that each Christian, 
no matter how young or how poor, has some good thingf 
to do. And it is his business to find out what that is. 
Nobody else may be able to tell him. The pastor may 
not be able to point it out. But each one can discover it 
for himself, if he is in earnest. As the soldier often 
finds himself without the elbow touch of his comrades, 
and out of hearing of the command of his captain, and 
must think and act for himself, so is often the Chris- 
tian. There will be no doubt that Christianity is the 



IS CHRISTIANITY THE FINAL RELIGION? 1 39 

final religion when each one of us, whether we be ap- 
pointed on committees for special work or not, is ac- 
tively, regularly spending some time and strength in 
loving service. Then it will be said, "What can be 
better ? See how the disciples of Jesus are busy in mak- 
ing the world happy and good." 

It does not make much difference where we find our 
place of usefulness. The fact that there is so much 
to be done should never be a discouragement, but rather 
a reason for beginning right where we are. In one 
of the battles of the Civil War a Colonel of Reserves 
galloped up to General Phil. Kearney and asked ex- 
citedly, "General, where shall I lead my command?" 
The genial Irishman smiled and answered coolly, 
"Onywhere, Colonel, onywhere, there's beautiful foight- 
ing all along the loine." 

I would like to insist that the loving ministry of 
Christians cannot be performed by professional work- 
ers. It is a most excellent thing to-day that so many 
young people, who do not feel called to the ministry or 
to definite missionary work, are yet able to devote 
themselves to religious and social service — leaders in 
settlements, in boys' work in churches, in religious 
teaching, and, of course, in the many departments of 
the Young Men's Christian Association. There were 
never so many people in Christian work. But the pro- 
fessional service is not enough. The larger the num- 
ber of trained workers, the larger must be the number 
of volunteers associated with them. We cannot buv 
substitutes. Paul said of the Macedonians, who had 
contributed so liberally of their money to the collection 



140 IS CHRISTIANITY THE FINAL RELIGION ? 

that was being made for the poor, "First they gave 
their own selves to the Lord and to us." Beneficence 
in Macedonia was not a substitute for personal effort. 

A pastor called on a very cultivated and refined wo- 
man. She said to him graciously, "I suppose you have 
come for some help for your mission. I am glad to 
give five dollars." "No," said he, "We need more than 
that. We need you." 

Jesus told the disciples of John to report what they 
had seen and heard. It has never been doubted that John 
was satisfied. No one could really hear Jesus and see 
his works and have any thought that another and a 
greater could come. Men do not always hear Jesus to- 
day, for there are confusing voices. They do not always 
see the Christian works, for these are mingled with our 
selfishness. Christianity to-day is not represented by 
him, who spake as never man spake and who went 
about doing good, but by the millions who bear his 
name. Therefore the world still asks of the Christ, 
whom it does not clearly hear nor clearly see, asking 
sometimes with a sigh, sometimes with a sneer, "Art 
thou he that cometh, or look we for another?" We 
must tell the gospel as he told it, we must live the life 
of service as he lived it, and then, though men do not 
understand our theologies nor comprehend our denomi- 
national differences, they will be satisfied that the 
Truth has come; and Jesus will be able through us to 
fulfill his blessed mission to draw all men unto him. 



